Author: Karagyozian Lena

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
January 27, 2005, Thursday
19:59:04 Central European Time
Lebanese cabinet approves draft election law
Beirut
The Lebanese cabinet voted Thursday in favour of a new election law
drafted by pro-Syrian Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh which has
ignited wide criticism by opposition figures. Twenty-four ministers
voted in favour of the law, while six abstained – four of these loyal
to Shiite house speaker Nabih Berri, Information Minister Elie ferzli
said. The draft was referred to parliament for making it a law that
would regulate general elections slated for spring. The new bill is
based on the 1960 election law, with some modifications. These
include a proposal reducing the voting age level to 18 years, a
control on campaign spending and provisions for solitary ballots
guaranteeing voting privacy. The draft comprises 75 articles, key
among which are articles 2 and 3 specifying the number of
constituencies and the sectarian deputies in each. Beirut would have
three constituencies, the first with six deputies (four Moslem
Sunnis, one Christian Orthodox and one Druze), the second with nine
deputies (two Moslem Sunnis, two Moslem Shiites, three Orthodox
Armenians, one Evengelical and Catholic Armenian) and the third with
four (one Catholic, one Orthodox, one Maronite and one for
minorities). All in all, Lebanon will have a total of 26
constituencies. In initial reaction, former prime minister Rafik
Hariri threatened to resign from parliament along with his bloc if
the legislative body passed the draft into law, sources close to the
premier said. Hariri rejected especially vehemently the way the
Beirut cosntituencies were drawn up by Franjieh, a Christian
Maronite, one of Syria’s staunchest allies and a supporter of
Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud. Hariri charged the
constituencies have been tailored for political goals and could spark
sectarian sedition. Hariri’s parliamentary bloc, Beirut’s Choice,
includes 18 MPs. Hariri said earlier he would run for election in the
third constituency instead of the first if the draft remained as it
is. His aim would be to ensure balance between the constituencies.
Hariri’s ally Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said the upcoming
parliamentary elections were very important for the country’s future,
adding: “Our aim is to end the Syrian tutorship via democratic means
and turn the page of the war to no return.” Jumblatt, once a Syrian
ally, fell out with Damascus after it influenced the Lebanese
parliament to extend the term for Lahoud for another three years.
Since then, Jumblat has been leading a campaign calling for
implementing the Saudi-sponsored Taif accord, on the basis of calling
for the withdrawal of some 14,000 Syrian troops in the eastern Beka’a
region and ending the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence agencies’
meddling in Lebanese domestic affairs. Maronite cardinal Christian
Mar Nasrallah Butros Sfeir also criticized the draft, saying: “The
law should be fair to ensure an honest and fair elections and keep
away from any outside influence.” dpa wh sc

PanArmenian News
Jan 27 2005
ATKINSON’S REPORT WILL NOT SAVE AZERBAIJANIANS
PACE resolution on Karabakh cannot be considered an achievement of
Azerbaijan dimplomacy.
Hearing the report on Karabakh, prepared by the British deputy David
Atkinson, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly passed a
resolution. The Assembly accepted only one of the three amendments
proposed by Armenian delegation. Nevertheless, the final edition of
the text does not pose any threat to Armenia and cannot become a
ground for undesirable processes.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Baku leaders assert that they are satisfied with
the passed resolution and find the resolution quite acceptable for
Azerbaijan. However, Baku oppositionists and independent political
scientists do not hold the same opinion. They have detected a number
of points that are dangerous for Azerbaijan. In-depth study of the
resolution text allows to note that the Azerbaijani should have no
less pretensions to Atkinson than Armenians. To make sure, let us try
to go through some of the points of the passed resolution.
In the first point there is something not accepted for Yerevan, since
in this part of the document it is mentioned about the `occupation of
considerable parts of the territory of Azerbaijan’ and the `control
of separatist forces over Nagorno-Karabakh region’. But the
Azerbaijani didn’t manage to achieve mentioning of Armenia in that
point. Here the matter concerns `occupation’ by `Armenian forces’,
that is to say Karabakh with whom official Baku refuses to contact.
The second point is most problematic for Azerbaijan. In this part
PACE actually confirms that the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh will
be fully allowable if it is achieved through a lawful process. In the
resolution it is mentioned: `…independence and secession of a
regional territory from a state may only be achieved through a lawful
and peaceful process based on democratic support by the inhabitants
of such territory’. This formulation which is completely undesirable
for Azerbaijan was kept in the final version of the document.
The third point is about the necesseity of fulfilling the four
resolutions of the United Nations. It should be mentioned that all
the resolutions passed yet in the war did not only call Armenians to
quit the territories under control, but also demanded from Azerbaijan
to agree on armistice immediately. It was Baku that broke the
resolution first. This was admited also by the former co-chairmen of
OSCE Minsk group, for instance Nikolay Gribkov.
The fourth point of the resolution touches upon the inadmissibility
of the use of force and condemns aggressive appeals and `military
propaganda’. This cannot refer to Armenia since aggressive appeals
are made from Baku only. Thus, this point is also a stone thrown in
the garden of Azerbaijan.
In the fifth point it is mentioned about the necessity to create an
`ad hoc Committee’ within the frames of PACE for dealing with the
Karabakh conflict. Regardless of the wish of Azerbaijan to involve
European Union in the process of conflict resolution, the `ad hoc
Committee’ will not dublicate the mission of the Minsk group but will
become a bridge between the two mediators and the Assembly. The
Committee will be formed of the deputies representing the member
countries of the Minsk group and will `report annually to the
Assembly on the action of their governments in this respect’.
The sixth point of the resolution is about the inadmissibility of
armed conflict. It is common knowledge that Armenia is not interested
in recommencing military actions. Meanwhile on Monday president Ilham
Aliev again mentioned about the determination of Azeri authorities to
regain controll over Karabakh by means of military actions.
The eighth point mentions the importance of regional cooperation.
This doesn’t refer to Armenia since official Yerevan has always been
ready for any contacts with neighbouring countries including
Azerbaijan. It is Baku that rejects any cooperation with Armenia
within the frames of regional programmes.
The ninth point is not favorable for Armenia since it talks about the
existence of two communities in Karabakh. It means that the legally
elected president of NKR Arkadi Ghukasyan stands on the same level
with some Nizami Bakhmanov who introduces himself as the `leader of
Azerbaijan community of Nagorno Karabakh’. Nevertheless, in Baku they
are also not very happy with the formulation of this point since
according to the stated appeal, Ilham Aliev will have to enter into
negotiations with Arkadi Ghukasyan. In this case he may not be called
the president of NKR but the `political representative’ of Armenian
community of Nagorno Karabakh.
Quite important is the accent of the tenth point where it is talked
about the ethnic expulsions. Azerbaijan delegation didn’t manage to
achieve the mentioning of territories contolled by Karabakh forces.
It means that PACE condemns both the creation of conditions for
Azerbaijani to quit the security zones around NKR and the ethnic
expulsions carried out by Azerbaijan authorities in Shahumyan and
Getashen.
The eleventh point of the reolution condemns the propaganda of
hatred. PACE calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to `foster
reconciliation, confidence-building and mutual understanding among
their peoples through schools, universities and the media’.
Meanwhile, it is widely known that it is Azerbaijan that hampers the
contacts between social and professional structures of the two
countries, their youth and journalists. Armenia anyway encourages any
attempts to establish dialogue on a non-governmental level.
Thus, it is absolutely obvious that together with all its
shortcomings, the resolution cannot be considered an achievement of
Azerbaijan diplomacy. The attempts of Baku parliamentarians to
convince their compatriots that they have won a serious victory over
Armenians is just a propaganda.
Artem Yerkanyan

The Guardian (London) – Final Edition
January 25, 2005
G2: Shortcuts: The meaning of holocaust: Mind your language
by John Mullan
In the week that sees the 60th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz, an argument about some of the most terrible events in
human history turns on a preference for the definite or indefinite
article. The Muslim Council of Britain is to boycott this week’s
public commemoration of the Holocaust because, in effect, our usual
word for the Nazi’s mass extermination of Europe’s Jews implies its
singularity. Iqbal Sacranie, the council’s secretary general, says it
will not attend because the event does not acknowledge “genocide” in
the occupied territories of Palestine.
In effect, he is proposing that we return Holocaust to the range of
meaning that it had up until the 1940s. Contrary to what is often
supposed, the word had long referred to what the OED calls drily “the
complete destruction of a large number of persons”. In the 19th
century it was readily used for mass slaughter, especially of
innocent or unarmed victims. Churchill, like others, used it just
after the first world war to refer to the killing of Armenians by
Turks. He called this “a holocaust”: appalling, but not
unprecedented.
The horrors of mass murder during the second world war pressured the
English language into a new, now sickeningly familiar word: genocide.
It was only retrospectively, during the 1950s, that “the Holocaust”
came to acquire its definite article and capital letter. This was
much influenced by historians, trying to account for what was now
seen as a singular chapter of human history. It was to be the
equivalent for non-Jews of “the Shoah”. By the 1960s, the usage was
generally accepted in Britain, in particular by broadcasters and
journalists. Now there was something called “Holocaust studies”: the
examination not of mass murder in general, but of one particular
project for exterminating a race.
We have other words, notably the Nazi’s own impeccably bland
euphemism, Endlosung (“the final solution”). Their term certainly
presumes the appalling uniqueness of what they were doing. Holocaust,
however, has a power that comes from its older roots. From the 13th
century it was used to mean a sacrifice that was wholly consumed by
fire (from the Greek words for whole and burned). It awakens
recollections of the burnt offerings of the Old Testament (holocaust
was used in some of the earliest English translations) and then of
another burning: the industrialised cremations organised by the
Nazis. No contestation is likely to unroot these associations, or the
word’s terrible singleness of meaning.

Sunday Times (London)
January 23, 2005, Sunday
Felix Aphrahamian (1914-2005)
by David Cairns
I got to know Felix Aprahamian, who died last week, when I began
writing for The Sunday Times in the 1970s. As number-two music
critic, 1948-89, Felix had the job of rounding up, in a few hundred
deftly turned words, the events of the week not covered by the main
review. Felix was the ideal person to do it: he knew everyone and
everything. Not that he was ever a familiar public figure. One of
that remarkable band of musical Armenians, he operated, very
effectively, behind the scenes. The average music-lover would have
had no idea how important he was as middleman. As teenage secretary
of the Organ Society, Felix arranged for Messiaen and Durufle to come
here, and thereafter energetically promoted them. French music and
the organ were his great loves.
The blind organist Andre Marchal left him his chamber organ in his
will; it was installed in the family house in Muswell Hill where
Felix spent most of his 90 years. There -or in his fabulous
Japanese-style garden with its famous tree, against which Poulenc
once relieved himself -Felix would preside over a company of friends
and acquaintances, delighting in showing them his vast collection of
scores, many autographed by their composers. But though he loved
telling you what he had done and was a wonderful gossip, he was not
bigheaded. He once told me Beecham had him to dinner only because Sir
Thomas’s friends had been driven away by the interminable monologues
of his wife. I don’t doubt Beecham appreciated Felix as the original
he was. He was the most kind and considerate of colleagues and
critics, but he had a mischievous side. His profile of Sir Malcolm
Sargent -“Flash Harry” to the musical profession -caused more than
one rehearsal to break up in laughter, as a member of the orchestra
insisted on reading out: “… quick as a flash. Harry him though we
may …”

ArmenPress
Jan 21 2005
ARMENIAN, GEORGIAN NGOs JOIN EFFORTS TO FIGHT HUMAN TRAFFICKING
YEREVAN, JANUARY 21, ARMENPRESS: Representatives of
non-governmental organizations of Armenia and Georgia, fighting
against organized crime, trafficking in human beings and illegal
migration have signed today in Yerevan a cooperation memorandum,
vowing to join their efforts to track down all such instances and
call perpetrators to account.
In February they will launch an Internet website and beginning
from June law-enforcement bodies of the two countries and relevant
government commissions will have to report about cooperation with
non-governmental organizations once in six months.
The regional network plans to participate actively in development
and discussions of national legislations, to provide legal consulting
and practical assistance to victims of trafficking and supervise the
so-called risky groups. Apart from this, Armenian and Georgian
organizations will seek cooperation with counterparts from the United
Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain, the main destinations of human
trafficking victims.

Before Tsunami, World Aid Helped Armenia
By STEVE GUTTERMAN
.c The Associated Press
GYUMRI, Armenia (AP) – The sliding doors of the battered Soviet
railroad car that Artak Akopian calls home reveal a small space almost
as icy as the outdoors. The makeshift quarters are decorated by little
but an old photograph of his mother, who was killed in the earthquake
that devastated Armenia in December 1988.
Akopian, then age 4, was at nursery school when the quake struck,
killing 25,000 people and leaving half a million homeless. Like the
tsunami that devastated southern Asia last month, the disaster focused
the world’s attention on the region and brought forth an outpouring of
aid.
“The aid was colossal, unexpectedly massive,” said Fadei Sarkisian,
who headed the government of Armenia at the time of the quake, when it
was a Soviet republic.
A look back at the aid effort shows successes and failures: More than
$1.2 billion of domestic and foreign aid was given for medical needs,
clothing, food and new housing. But thousands, like Akopian, remain in
substandard housing – 2,000 families according to government
estimates, some 7,000 families according to journalists who have
studied the problem.
The quake shook the mountains of northern Armenia just as Mikhail
Gorbachev was opening the Soviet Union to the West. He cut short a
summit with outgoing President Ronald Reagan – where he had announced
military cuts and pledged support for human rights – to rush home.
The international aid effort “wouldn’t have been so big without
Gorbachev. It was a milestone in the history of the Cold War,” said
John Evans, who is now U.S. ambassador to Armenia and was involved in
the earthquake relief effort. “The initial response – there was no
question about it – was all-out.”
Less than two weeks after the quake, Soviet authorities said they had
received $100 million in aid from 77 countries. An Armenian official
in the Central Committee of Armenia’s Communist Party at the time of
the quake said on condition of anonymity that earthquake-related aid
through 1992 totaled $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion. About 40 percent
came from abroad.
The United States sent heating stoves and search-dog teams. Britain
sent ultrasonic listening devices and fiber-optic cameras for
searching the rubble. Clothing and medical equipment came from around
the world.
Sarkisian recalled standing by rubble and hearing cries for help; but
he knew the powerful cranes needed to lift the concrete slabs on top
of them would take days to assemble. Two days after the quake, cranes
arrived from Italy and Germany, saving, he said, thousands of people.
Akopian’s mother was not among them. Along with his younger brother,
she was killed when the 6.9-magnitude quake destroyed their apartment.
Akopian’s father survived but became mentally unbalanced and later
died.
Now 20, Akopian lives with his aunt, her two children and his wife in
the cramped, corroding railroad car – part of a jumble of cargo
containers and other tiny shelters huddled in a hollow in Gyumri,
Armenia’s second-largest city, which was called Leninakan in the
Soviet era.
The hard-scrabble neighborhood illustrates the desperation that
persists despite the recovery effort that has restored a semblance of
normal life to Gyumri and even Spitak, a town where the quake left
only a handful of buildings standing and killed about half the
population of 20,000.
Gorbachev pledged to rebuild the devastated area, but the 1991 Soviet
collapse scuttled that effort and plunged Armenia into an economic
crisis.
As Armenians across the newly independent country chopped down trees
in parks and chopped up furniture to heat their homes, the
quake-stricken area become just another region where residents
struggled to survive. Into the early 1990s, the earthquake zone was
still shattered and demoralized.
Karlen Ambartsumian, who was deputy mayor of Gyumri when the quake
struck and now advises the current mayor, put part of the blame on a
decrease in foreign aid following the initial, emotionally driven
interest.
“It should have been more prolonged – not just to aid at the time
when the whole world is talking about it and then forget, but to
continue, step by step, doing what is needed at each stage,”
Ambartsumian said.
He said what’s needed most in Gyumri, where dozens of factories are
idle and unemployment is staggering, is aid in the form of job
creation.
“When a U.N. official asked me how much flour we needed, I told him:
Send us fishing rods, not fish,” said Simon Ter-Simonian, head of the
government’s humanitarian assistance department.
While Sarkisian said the aid effort in the quake’s wake was
well-coordinated, Ambartsumian said distribution was badly flawed and
that people who suffered the most missed a lot of the aid, which was
handed out while they were looking for loved ones’ bodies.
“Everybody sent aid, but nobody was able to organize its fair
distribution,” Ambartsumian said.
Sofia Airopetian, a 73-year-old Spitak resident, though, tells a
different story. She says the world never forgot the earthquake
victims and that she still receives food aid. Last year she moved out
of a cargo container and into one of several new apartments built
under a program funded by Armenian-American Kirk Kerkorian.
The new housing beneath the mountains that shadow Spitak augments
homes and hospitals built by foreign countries following the quake.
A U.S. Agency for International Development program has enabled more
than 7,000 families to move out of temporary housing, ridding Gyumri
of many of the metal shacks that survivor Gayane Markarian called a
constant reminder of the quake that killed her brother.
After 15 years in a temporary home near Akopian’s railroad car,
Markarian and her family of five are preparing to move back to their
old building, finally renovated after the quake. But her 18-year-old
son Vigen fears the lack of jobs will force him into the army.
Across the dirt road, 30-year-old Ella Voskanian said she, her mother
and 12-year-old daughter have no hope of leaving their dilapidated
metal container because they are not eligible for other housing for
bureaucratic reasons. At the time of the quake, they were registered
at a home that belongs to relatives.
“We have nowhere to go,” she said.
01/19/05 02:22 EST

Agency quotes Secretary Powell on support for Azeri territorial integrity
Turan news agency
18 Jan 05
BAKU
US Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a letter to Azerbaijani
Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov on 10 January.
The letter expressed the [US] stance on the UN General Assembly
discussions of the situation in the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan, as well as on the bilateral negotiations at the highest
level between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Foreign Ministry’s press
centre has reported.
Powell described as “hopeful” the “important steps” taken in the
course of the Prague talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani
foreign ministers, and during the meetings between the two countries’
presidents in Astana and Warsaw.
Powell also writes that Washington “unequivocally” supports
Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and is glad to take part in a
mission to monitor the situation on the ground, and “impatiently”
awaits the expert conclusion.

ARMENIA MAYBE OF LESS IMPORTANCE FOR RUSSIA, A RUSSIAN ANALYST SAYS
YEREVAN, JANUARY 17. ARMINFO. In return for Russia’s support, Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan expresses readiness to further favor the
strengthening of Russian economic presence in Armenia, writes Gennadiy
Sisoyev in his article in the Russian newspaper “Kommersant.”
In his words, in the establishment of relations with Yerevan, Russia
actively used the interest of President Robert Kocharyan in the
political support of Moscow in connection with activation of the
Armenian opposition after “rose revolution” in Georgia. The author
writes that in the course of implementation of the bilateral agreement
“Property for Debt,” the main part of power capacities of Armenia were
transferred under control of Russia (80% of energy generation in
Armenia). The Armenian monopolist in the sphere of gas, “ArmRosgasprom,”
is also controlled by Russian structures. And finally, the author
writes, full packages of shares of a number of enterprises of the
defense complex of Armenia have been transferred to Russia. Armenia’s
importance as a major strategic partner of Russia in the Transcaucasus
may considerably decrease if Moscow fails to maintain its influence on
Georgia, the analyst says.
He said that although the relations between Moscow and the new
authorities of Georgia overcame the phase of tension at the end of
2004, they are still unsatisfactory. As regards the relations with
Azerbaijan, the author says that the Kremlin is concerned that Aliyev
Jr. may correct the balanced policy of his father in direction of
closer cooperation with the West in order that Azerbaijan receives the
role of the regional leader. The author says that official Moscow is
dissatisfied that Baku avoids conclusion of a long-term agreement with
Russia on oil transit to supply the whole Caspian oil through the
pipeline BTC via Georgia and Turkey. Besides, Moscow is concerned over
lack of process in the sphere of military and technical cooperation
with Baku and suspects the new authorities of Azerbaijan in the secret
intention to change over to western standards of armament.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Jan 14 2005
Companies dispatching cargo to Armenia determined

Azerbaijani businessmen and 5 Georgian companies involved in
transporting cargo to Georgia and then to Armenia through Azerbaijan
have been determined.
A criminal case has been started over the activity of these
companies, the names of which are not disclosed, the Georgian Customs
Department reports.
According to initial investigation, the Azerbaijani companies have
transferred goods, which were purchased from Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan, to Armenia.
Azerbaijani ambassador to Georgia Ramiz Hasanov told local ATV
channel that he was not authorized to name these companies.
Under the agreement reached with the Georgian Ministry of Finance,
the Azerbaijani government is regularly informed about the further
destination of the transit consignments.*

FrontPageMagazine.com, CA
Jan 12 2005
What’s Wrong with Turkey?
By Gamaliel Issac
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 12, 2005
In my previous article, Turkey’s Dark Past I exposed the falseness of
the claims of Mustafa Akyol that `Turkey has had an Islamic heritage
free of anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism’ Mr. Akyol wrote a
rebuttal, What’s Right With Turkey, in which he argued that the
Turks have a great record when it comes to the Jews and that when the
Jews were expelled from Spain, they were welcomed by the Sultan. In
addition he writes that Jews expelled from Hungary in 1376, from
France by Charles VI in September 1394, and from Sicily early in the
15th century found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Mustapha Akyol
points out that the blood libel and other such standard anti-Semitic
nonsense was unknown in Muslim lands until the 19th century and that
these were introduced to the Middle East by the “westernized” elite,
who had been infected by the anti-Semitic plague from its ultimate
source: Europe. He points out that Mr. Salahattin Ulkumen, Consul
General at Rhodes in 1943-1944, was recognized by the Yad Vashem as a
Righteous Gentile “Hassid Umot ha’Olam” in June 1990 for his efforts
to save Jews and how Marseilles vice-consul Necdet Kent, boarded a
railway car full of Jews bound for Auschwitz, risking his own life in
an attempt to persuade the Germans to send them back to France.
How can we reconcile the refuge provided by Turkey for the Jews of
Europe and the heroic efforts made by Turkish politicians such as Mr.
Ulkumen and Mr. Kent with the atrocities committed by the Turks
against the Armenians and against the Jews of Palestine which I
described in my article, “Turkey’s Dark Past?”
Akyol’s explanation is that what the West sees as an unjust massacre
of the Armenians was simply fighting between Turks and Armenians. In
his article “What’s Right With Turkey” he wrote: `What happened in
1915, and beforehand, was mutual killing in which the Armenian loss
was greater than that of the Muslims (Turks and Kurds), but in which
the brutality was pretty similar on both sides.’ Another rationale
for the Turkish `fighting’ provided by Mr. Akyol was that of Armenian
revolutionary agitation and aid given the invading Russians by
Anatolian Armenians.
In my article “Turkey’s Dark Past” I quote passages from Serge
Trifkovic’s book, The Sword of the Prophet, which convincingly
demonstrate that what happened at Smyrna was a massacre. Akyol argues
that Dr. Trifkovic is an unreliable source and that what happened at
Smyrna was simply fighting between the two sides. Mr. Akyol also
writes that Smyrna was an Ottoman city that was liberated by the
Turks from the occupying Greek army.
Akyol addressed my arguments about the role of Islam in the massacre
of the Armenians by referring the reader to two articles he has
written, two articles which do shed light on the massacres of the
Armenians but not in the way he intended.
In this article I will point out the errors in Akyol’s arguments and
provide an alternative explanation for the paradox of Turkish
tolerance to the Jews of Europe and cruelty to the Armenian
Christians. In addition I will discuss the paradox of the refuge
given the European Jews by the Turks in Anatolia in the context of
the intolerance of the Turks towards the Jews of Palestine. Finally
I will discuss the relevance of Turkish history to the question of
whether or not Turkey should be accepted into the European Union.

Smyrna, A Greek or an Ottoman City?
Akyol wrote that `The truth is that Smyrna (known as Izmir in
Turkish) was an Ottoman city that included a Greek quarter, and the
Turks were not invading Smyrna, they were liberating the city from
the occupying Greek army.’
Akyol’s argument that Smyrna was an Ottoman and not a Greek city
ignores over a thousand years of history. According to the
Encyclopedia Britannica Online:
`Greek settlement is first clearly attested by the presence of
pottery dating from about 1000 BC. According to the Greek historian
Herodotus, the Greek city was founded by Aeolians but soon was seized
by Ionians. From modest beginnings, it grew into a stately city in
the 7th Century, with massive fortifications and blocks of
two-storied houses. Captured by Alyattes of Lydia about 600 BC, it
ceased to exist as a city for about 300 years until it was refounded
by either Alexander the Great or his lieutenants in the 4th century
BC at a new site on and around Mount Pagus. It soon emerged as one of
the principal cities of Asia Minor and was later the centre of a
civil diocese in the Roman province of Asia, vying with Ephesus and
Pergamum for the title `first city of Asia.’ Roman emperors visited
there, and it was celebrated for its wealth, beauty, library, school
of medicine, and rhetorical tradition. The stream of Meles is
associated in local tradition with Homer, who is reputed to have been
born by its banks. Smyrna was one of the early seats of Christianity.
Capital of the naval theme (province) of Samos under the Byzantine
emperors, Smyrna was taken by the Turkmen Aydin principality in the
early 14th Century AD. After being conquered in turn by the crusaders
sponsored by Pope Clement VI and the Central Asian conqueror Timur
(Tamerlane), it was annexed to the Ottoman Empire about 1425.
Although severely damaged by earthquakes in 1688 and 1778, it
remained a prosperous Ottoman port with a large European population.
Izmir [Smyrna] was occupied by Greek forces in May 1919 and
recaptured by Turkish forces under Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal
Atatürk) on September 9, 1922. `
One problem with the encyclopedic summary above is that as a
necessary consequence of its brevity we do not realize what the
events described really entail. Here is what Marjorie Housepian
Dobkin, wrote about the first conquest of Smyrna in 1402 by Tamerlane
and his Muslim army in her book The Smyrna Affair.
`In 1402 Tamerlaine butchered the inhabitants and razed the buildings
in an orgy of cruelty that would become legendary. While the
inhabitants slept, his men stealthily undermined the city’s wall and
propped them up with timber smeared with pitch. Then he applied the
torch, the walls sank into ditches prepared to receive them, and the
city lay open to the invader. Smyrna’s would be defenders, the
Knights of Saint John, escaped to their ships by fighting their way
through a mob of panic-stricken inhabitants. They escaped just in
time, for Tamerlaine ordered a thousand prisoners beheaded and used
their skulls to raise a monument in his honor. He did not linger
over his victory – it was his custom to ravage and ride on. He rode
on to Ephesus, where the city’s children were sent out to greet and
appease him with song. ‘What is this noise?’ he roared, and ordered
his horsemen to trample the children to death.”
Corroboration of Mr. Trifkovic
Akyol argues that Mr. Trifkovic is not a reliable source yet there
are many independent sources that corroborate the excerpts of Mr.
Trifkovic’s book that I included in my previous article. I include a
corroboration of his account about the attack on Archbishop
Chrystostom in an appendix to this article.
Here are a few accounts not included by Mr. Trifkovic that
corroborate his argument that what happened at Smyrna was not just
fighting but rather a massacre of the infidel inhabitants of Smyrna
and the burning of the city by the Turks.
`Anita Chakerian, a young teacher at the [American Collegiate]
Institute, saw the Turkish guards dragging into the building large
sacks, which they deposited in various corners. They were bringing
rice and potatoes the men said, because they knew the people were
hungry and would soon have nothing left to eat. The sacks were not
to be opened until the bread was exhausted. Such unexpected
generosity led one of the sailors to investigate; the bags held
gunpowder and dynamite. On Tuesday night, wagons bearing gasoline
drums again moved through the deserted streets around the College…
“At 1:00 A.M. on Wednesday, Mabel Kalfa, a Greek nurse at the
Collegiate Institute, saw three fires in the neighborhood. At 4:00
A.M. fires in a small wooden hut adjoining the College wall and on a
veranda near the school were put out by firemen. At noon on
Wednesday a sailor beckoned Mabel Kalfa and Miss Mills to the window
in the dining room. ‘Look there,’ he said. ‘The Turks are setting
the fires!’ The women could see three Turkish officers silhouetted
in the window of a photographer’s shop opposite the school. Moments
after the men emerged, flames poured from the roof and the windows…
Said Miss Mills: ‘I could plainly see the Turks carrying tins of
petroleum into the houses, from which, in each instance, fire burst
forth immediately afterward.’
It was not long before all of Smyrna was on fire. Ms. Housepian
writes:
`The spectacle along the waterfront haunted Melvin Johnson for the
rest of his life. ‘When we left it was just getting dusk,’ he
remembers. ‘As we were pulling out I’ll never forget the screams.
As far as we could go you could hear `em screaming and hollering, and
the fire was going on… most pitiful thing you ever saw in your life.
In your life. Could never hear nothing like it any other place in
the world, I don’t think. And the city was set in a – a kind of a
hill, and the fire was on back coming this way toward the ship. That
was the only way the people could go, toward the waterfront. A lot
of `em were jumping in, committing suicide, It was a sight all
right.'”
Ms. Housepian wrote how:
`On the Iron Duke, Major Arthur Maxwell of His Majesty’s Royal
Marines, watching through binoculars, distinguished figures pouring
out buckets of liquid among the refugees. At first he took them to
be firemen attempting to extinguish the flames, then he realized, to
his horror, that every time they appeared there was a sudden burst of
flames. ‘My God! They’re trying to burn the refugees!’ he
exclaimed.”
Ms. Housepian included the account of reporter John Clayton who
wrote:
`Except for the squalid Turkish quarter, Smyrna has ceased to exist.
The problem for the minorities is here solved for all time. No doubt
remains as to the origin of the fire…The torch was applied by Turkish
regular soldiers.’
The Rebellion Excuse:
Akyol started his article by excusing the Armenian Genocide with the
excuse that the Armenians rebelled against the Turks and helped the
Russians.
One reason that this is a poor excuse is that the Armenians had every
reason to rebel against the Turks. Marjorie Housepian, describes
what Dhimmi life was like under the Turks.
“Beginning in the fifteenth century, Ottoman policy drove the most
unmanageable elements, such as the Kurds, into the six Armenian
provinces in the isolated northeast. Thereafter, the Armenians were
not only subjected to the iniquitous tax-farming system (applicable
to the Moslem peasants as well), the head tax, and the dubious
privilege of the military exemption tax, but also to impositions that
gave the semi barbarous tribes license to abuse them. The
hospitality tax, which entitled government officials ‘and all who
passed as such’ to free lodging and food for three days a year in an
Armenian home, was benign compared to the dreaded kishlak, or
winter-quartering tax, whereby – in return for a fee pocketed by the
vali – a Kurd was given the right to quarter himself and his cattle
in Armenian homes during the long winter months, which often extended
to half the year. The fact that Armenian dwellings were none too
spacious and the Kurdish way of life exceptionally crude proved the
least of the burden. Knowing that the unarmed Armenians had neither
physical nor legal redress, a Kurd, armed to the teeth, could not
only make free with his host’s possessions but if the fancy struck
him could rape and kidnap his women and girls as well.”
In addition the Turks would abduct Christian boys at an early age,
sequester them for military training and use them to quell unrest and
to fight their battles for them.
Marjorie Housepian wrote about the Armenian `rebellions’ as follows:
`After the Treaty of Berlin, Hamid defiantly gerrymandered the
boundaries in the northern provinces, usurped Armenian lands, moved
in more Kurds, and increased the proportion of Moslems. When the
Armenians were driven to protest to Britain that the Porte [Turkish
Government] was breaking the terms of the treaty, Hamid denounced
them as traitors conspiring with foreigners to destroy the empire.
Yet it was not until 1887 that a number of Armenian leaders,
despairing of every other means, organized the first of two Armenian
revolutionary parties – the second was organized in 1890. The Church
discouraged revolutionary activity, fearing that it would lead to
nothing more than intensified bloodshed, and the people were on the
whole inclined to agree with their religious leaders. Small bands of
Armenian revolutionaries nonetheless staged a number of
demonstrations during the 1890’s and gave Hamid exactly the pretext
he sought. Declaring that the only way to get rid of the Armenian
question is to get rid of the Armenians, he proceeded to the task
with every means at hand. He sent masses of unhappy Circassians, who
had themselves lately been driven from Europe, into Eastern Anatolia
– where the Armenian population had already been reduced by massacre
and migration – and encouraged them, along with the Kurds, to attack
village after village. He roused the tribesmen to the kill by having
his agents spread rumors that the Armenians were about to attack
them, then cited every instance of self-defense as proof of rebellion
and as an excuse for further massacre. He sent his special Hamidieh
regiments to put down ‘revolts’ in such districts as Sassoun, where
the Armenians were protesting that they were unable to pay their
taxes to the government because the Kurds had left them nothing with
which to pay…’
Marjorie Housepian explained that the Armenians went great efforts
not to rebel. She wrote:
`In order to prove the rebelliousness of the victims it was necessary
first to provoke them into acts of self-defense, which could then be
labeled ‘Insurrectionary.’ A campaign of terror such as had been
practiced earlier in the Balkans was already under way in Armenian
towns and villages near the Russian border, and had been ever since
Enver’s impetuous winter offensive against the Russians had turned
into a disaster; Turkish leaders had publicly ascribed the defeat to
the perfidy of the Armenians on both sides of the Russo-Turkish
frontier. The Turkish Armenians, however, proved themselves
incredibly forbearing in the face of provocation. ‘The Armenian
clergy and political leaders saw many evidences that the Turks … were
[provoking rebellion] and they went among the people cautioning them
to be quiet and bear all insults and even outrages patiently, so as
not to give provocation,’ wrote Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador
to Turkey. ‘Even though they burn a few of our villages,’ these
leaders would say, `do not retaliate for it is better than a few be
destroyed than that a whole nation be massacred.”
Was the Turkish Destruction of Smyrna Vengeance?
Akyol wrote that the Turks were not invading Smyrna, they were
liberating the city from the occupying Greek army. He also wrote
that the Greeks had previously committed atrocities against the
Turks and that `The bloodshed in Smyrna in September, 1922 was an act
of vengeance.’ Undoubtedly vengeance played a role but that
explanation is incomplete. If the bloodshed in Smyrna was an act of
vengeance against the Greeks then why did the Turks also annihilate
the Armenian population of Smyrna? If atrocities committed by Greeks
during the re-occupation of Smyrna is the explanation for Turkish
atrocities, then why did the Turks commit atrocities against the
Armenians and Greeks in Smyrna before the Greek re-occupation? It
has been estimated that during the seven centuries of Turkish
presence in Asia Minor several millions of Greeks,… were
systematically massacred.
John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States
(1824-1828) had the following to say about the suffering of the
Greeks under the Turks:
`If ever insurrection was holy in the eyes of God, such was that of
the Greeks against their Mahometan oppressors… They were suffered to
be overwhelmed by the whole mass of the Ottoman power; cheered only
by the sympathies of all the civilized world, but without a finger
raised to sustain or relieve them by the Christian governments of
Europe; while the sword of extermination, instinct with the spirit of
the Koran, was passing in merciless horror over the classical regions
of Greece, the birth-place of philosophy, of poetry, of eloquence, of
all the arts that embellish, and all the sciences that dignify the
human character.’
The reason why the allies assigned Greece the responsibility to
administer Smyrna after World War I was stated by Alexander
Millerand, president of the Supreme Allied Council as follows:
`The Turkish government not only failed in its duty to protect its
non-Turkish citizens from the looting, violence and murders, but
there are many indications that the Turkish government itself was
responsible for directing and organizing the most cruel attacks
against the populations, which it was supposed to protect. For these
reasons, the Allied powers have decided to liberate from the Turkish
yoke all the lands where the majority of the people were non-Turks.”
Persecution against the Greeks in Turkey continues to this very day.
The Turkish Paradox
Why were the Turks so brutal to the Armenians and yet as Mr. Akyol
pointed out in his previous article, did they offer refuge to Jews
fleeing from European Nations. In order to understand this we need
to first understand the concept of Dhimma. Tudor Parfitt in his
book, The Jews in Palestine 1800-1882 (The Boydell Press, 1987)
explains that concept as follows:
`Dhimma is the relationship between the protector (in this case the
Sultan) and the protected (the Dhimmi) and was the dominant factor in
the status of the ahl al-kitab (People of the Book) i.e. Jews,
Christians, Sabeans, (sabi’un) and later Persian Zoroastrians, in the
Muslim state. Dhimma required the state to protect the life and
property of the Dhimmi, exempt him from military service and allow
him freedom of worship, while the Dhimmi was expected to pay the poll
tax(cizye), not to insult Islam, not to build new places of worship
and to dress in a distinctive fashion in order not to be mistaken for
a Muslim. In cases of civil and family law, non-Muslims had
judicial autonomy except in such cases which involved both a Dhimmi
and a Muslim, in which event the case would be tried before a Muslim
court (mahkama) where the Dhimmi’s legal testimony was
unacceptable…The measure of religious toleration that obtained under
Islam had to be purchased: and the price was a considerable one.”
One reason it was difficult to obey the Dhimma contract was that in
addition to infidels being required to pay exorbitant taxes they were
also required to live in lowliness and degradation. This was
explained by the Sultan of Morocco, Mulay Abd ar -Rahman in a letter
he wrote in 1841 to the French Consulate at Tangiers as follows:
`The Jews of Our fortunate Country have received guarantees from
which they benefit in exchange for their carrying out the conditions
imposed by our religious Law on those people who enjoyed its
protection: these conditions have been and still are observed by our
coreligionists. If the Jews respect these conditions, Our Law
prohibits the spilling of their blood and enjoins the protection of
their belongings, but if they break so much as a single condition,
[then] Our blessed Law permits their blood to be spilt and their
belongings to be taken. Our glorious faith only allows them the
marks of lowliness and degradation, thus the sole fact that a Jew
raises his voice against a Muslim constitutes a violation of the
conditions of protection.’
An example of the consequences of violating the Dhimma contract is
given by a letter written by Porter, a British ambassador to Turkey
to a colleague in London on June 3, 1758, about an unfortunate Jew
and an Armenian who thought the dress codes had been forgotten. I
include an excerpt below:
`This time of Ramazan is mostly taken up by day in sleep, by night in
eating, so that we have few occurrences of any importance, except
what the Grand Seignor [Sultan Mustafa III] himself affords us he is
determin’d to keep to his laws, and to have them executed, that
concerning dress has been often repeated, and with uncommon
solemnity, yet as in the former reigns, after some weeks it was
seldom attended to, but gradually transgress’d, these people whose
ruling passion is directed that way, thought it was forgot, and
betook themselves to their old course, a Jew on his Sabbath was the
first victim, the Grand Seignor going the rounds incognito, met him,
and not having the Executioner with him, without sending him [the
Jew] to the Vizir, had him executed, and his throat cut that moment,
the day after an Armenian follow’d, he was sent to the Vizir, who
attempted to save him, and and condemn’d him to the Galleys, but the
Capigilar Cheaia [head of the guards] came to the Porte at night,
attended with the executioner, to know what was become of the
delinquent, that first Minister had him brought directly from the
Galleys and his head struck off, that he might inform his Master he
had anticipated his Orders.’
Jews and Armenians as long as they meekly tolerated the depredations
of Dhimmitude and obeyed all the rules were generally not killed
outright because as jizya [tax] paying infidels they was considered a
valuable commodity. Joan Peters, in her book From Time Immemorial,
wrote how after the conquest of Alexandria, Caliph Omar received word
from his general describing the wealth they had just attained.
`I have captured a city from the description of which I shall
refrain. Suffice it to say that I have seized therein 4,000 villas
with 4,000 baths, 40,000 poll-tax paying Jews and four hundred places
of entertainment for the royalty.”
Akyol responded to two quotes from the Koran from my previous
article, by referring the reader to two articles he had written. In
one of those articles ` Still Standing For Islam and Against
Terrorism,” Mr. Akyol, quoted Karen Armstrong’s writings about the
aftermath of the fighting at Badr as follows:
`The Muslims were jubilant. They began to round up prisoners and, in
the usual Arab fashion, started to kill them, but Muhammad put a stop
to this. A revelation came down saying that the prisoners of war were
to be ransomed. `
The quote chosen by Akyol demonstrates that money was what kept the
Muslims from murdering the infidel. Ransom was why Muhammad put a
stop to the Muslim murder of the prisoners of war from Badr. Money
is the reason that subjugated people, who pay the jizya and karaj
taxes are not killed.
Another argument in Akyol’s article is that according to Islam there
is no compulsion in religion. Although Muslims have violated this
law frequently, a recent example being the forced conversion of the
wife of an Egyptian priest, there have actually been cases where they
have compelled infidels not to convert.

Bernard Lewis, in his book The Arabs in History, wrote that during:
`the time of `Abd al-Malik the Muslim government actually resorted to
discouraging conversion … in order to restore the failing revenues of
the state.”
In 1492, when Spain expelled the Jews, Sultan Bayazid II ordered the
governors of the provinces of the Ottoman Empire “not to refuse the
Jews entry or cause them difficulties, but to receive them
cordially.” This act of kindness may have at least in part been
motivated by financial need. The Sultan even said that: “the
Catholic monarch Ferdinand was wrongly considered as wise, since he
impoverished Spain by the expulsion of the Jews, and enriched
Turkey”.
Serge Trifkovic, in an article in Chronicles Magazine titled Turkey
in the European Union: a lethal fait accompli (10/29/04), argued that
tolerance did not play a role in the welcome extended to the Jews by
Sultan Bayazid II. He wrote:
`The act that resonates with modern Ottoman apologists was the
invitation to the Jews of Spain to resettle in the Sultan’s lands
after expulsion under Ferdinand and Isabella. They were invited not
because of the Turks’ ‘tolerance,’ however, but primarily because it
was necessary to replace the vast numbers of Christians who had been
killed, expelled, or reduced to penury, and thus to maintain the
Sultan’s tax base. The fact that the Ottoman Jews held a more favored
status within the Empire than the giaours (infidel Christian dogs) is
as much a reason for celebration of the Ottoman ‘tolerance’ as is the
fact that the Nazis were somewhat more ‘tolerant’ of occupied Slavs
than of the Jews…
“The Jews of Turkey as a whole did not violate the Dhimma contract.
The Armenians by rebelling and seeking assistance from foreign powers
did violate the contract. The Zionist movement also violated the
Dhimma contract by advocating an independent state of Israel. This
is one explanation for the paradox of Turkey giving refuge to Jews
and massacring Armenians and threatening to massacre Jews in
Palestine.
“A report of the Chief Dragoman (Turkish-speaking interpreter) of the
British embassy regarding the 1894-96 massacres supports this
explanation. He wrote:
“…[The perpetrators] are guided in their general action by the
prescriptions of the Sheri [Sharia] Law. That law prescribes that if
the ‘rayah’ [Dhimmi] Christian attempts, by having recourse to
foreign powers, to overstep the limits of privileges allowed them by
their Mussulman [Muslim] masters, and free themselves from their
bondage, their lives and property are to be forfeited, and are at the
mercy of the Mussulmans. To the Turkish mind the Armenians had tried
to overstep those limits by appealing to foreign powers, especially
England. They therefore considered it their religious duty and a
righteous thing to destroy and seize the lives and properties of the
Armenians…”
Violation of the Dhimma contract is not the only reason the Armenians
of Turkey were massacred and the Jews of Palestine were threatened
with massacre. The Jews of Palestine, and the Armenians of Turkey
had one crucial thing in common that endangered them, Turkey was
occupying their homeland and they wanted to liberate their homeland.
The ultimate crime as far as the Turks were concerned was the
Armenian, and Jewish desire for freedom, because in addition to
violating the Dhimma contract, such freedom threatened the integrity
of their empire.
Liberation, the Root Cause of Turkish Revenge
Turkish vengeance occurred when they felt there was a threat to the
integrity of their empire. In April 1876 when Bulgarians fought for
their freedom, the Turks committed mass slaughter in Bulgaria,
killing 12000-15,000 Bulgarians.
Graber, in his book, Caravans to Oblivion, The Armenian Genocide,
explained how the threat of Armenian liberation led to revenge by the
Turkish authorities.
`It was in Geneva in 1887 that the first radical Armenian political
organization was born. It was called Hunchak, meaning ‘bell,’ and it
was revolutionary in its aims. It was followed in 1890 by the
foundation of the much more important and longer lived
Dashnakstutium. Both organizations called for an independent
Armenia…This was basically a new position for the Armenians. Its
effect on Abdulhamid was predictable. He felt he was faced with a
sinister revolution that he must use all his resources to combat.
“When Armenian resistance first arose in 1893, however, it was not
driven by urban radicals or intellectual leaders. Its voice was the
Armenian peasantry in Sassun, deep in the Armenian mountains. It was
not based primarily on a yearning for freedom; its cause was much
nearer to the hearts of a peasant society. The wandering Kurdish
tribes had been given tacit allowance by the sultan to extort the
peasant Armenian communities in the way that gangsters extort
protection money for use of their turf. According to the historian
Christopher J. Walker, `The Kurdish aghas [commanders] used to demand
from them a kind of protection tax – an annual due of crops, cattle,
silver, iron ore…agricultural implements or clothes… In many places
the Armenians were forced to pay double taxes…
“By 1892 Abdulhamid had authorized the formation of some thirty
regiments of Hamideye, each about five hundred men strong and each
composed of itinerant Kurds whose spoken or unspoken function was to
suppress the Armenians. To defend themselves against the
depredations of the Kurds and the corruption of the Turkish
officials, Armenian peasants in the Sassun district retreated into
the mountains and held out against successive attacks mounted by
Kurds and regular Turkish army units. …
“In the end, despite some early success, the Armenian peasants were
overrun and murdered – men, women and children – in their mountain
hideouts.’
The Armenian desire for national liberation ultimately led to their
destruction. Graber wrote that:
`In November 1914, the Russians published a declaration that promised
national liberation to the Armenians on the condition that they
oppose their Ottoman masters. Some Armenians answered the call;
small numbers of Armenian soldiers deserted from the Turkish army and
some in the areas of the battles gave assistance to the Russian
forces… In the winter of 1914-15, the Ottoman army mounted a major
attack against the Russians… Enver Pasha, who had assumed command of
the Third Army, made fatal errors which led to the loss of most of
his forces and the loss of wide stretches of territory to the Russian
army. There are those who point to Enver Pasha’s direct
responsibility for the military defeat as the motive for his search
for a scapegoat; the Armenians were accused of treachery by Enver
Pasha and his supporters. It was alleged that Armenian betrayal,
according to the Empire’s rulers, had caused the defeat… To this
day, the Turkish government claims the treachery of the Armenians as
the explanation for what subsequently befell them.
“During the night, between April 23 and April 24, 1915, the
Constantinople police broke into the homes of the Armenian elite in
the city. Two hundred thirty five Armenian leaders politicians,
writers, educators, lawyers, etc. – were taken to the police station
and then deported.’
The method of elimination by deportation is explained by Graber as
follows:
`The Young Turks had no railroad system to collect and dispose of
the Armenians. Despite the efforts to proceed with the construction
of the Berlin to Baghdad railroad, there were few miles of track
available, and the condition of most highways was appalling.
Consequently, those charged by the Teshkilati Mahsusa with the
responsibility of eliminating the Armenian community evolved a system
of such primitive brutality that even today, after our century has
witnessed the indiscriminate massacre of many millions, the
Ittihadist project still evokes the most fundamental feelings of
revulsion. There is no doubt that if a more sophisticated machinery
for slaughter had been available, the Young Turks would have used it.
Lacking such machinery, their system of eradication worked along the
following lines, as described by one scholar of the period:
“‘Initially all the able-bodied men of a certain town or village
would be ordered, either by a public crier or by an official
proclamation nailed to the walls, to present themselves at the Konak
[government building]. The proclamation stated that the Armenian
population would be deported, gave the official reasons for it, and
assured them that the government was benevolent. Once at the Konak,
they would be jailed for a day or two. No reason was given. Then
they would be led out of jail and marched out of town. At the first
lonely halting place they would be shot, or bayoneted to death. Some
days later the old men and the women and children were summoned in
the same way; they were often given a few days grace, but then they
had to leave. It was their misfortune not to be killed at the first
desolate place. The government’s reasoning appears to have been: the
men might pose a threat – leaders might spring up among them, who
would defy the order; but why waste valuable lead on women, old men
and children? Instead they were forced to walk, endlessly, along
pre-arranged routes, until they died from thirst, hunger, exposure,
or exhaustion.'”
Armenians were also slaughtered enroute. The following is a story of
a young girl, who was deported:
`I was twelve years old, I was with my mother. They drove us with
whips and we had no water. It was very hot and many of us died
because there was no water. They drove us with whips, I do not know
how many days and nights and weeks, until we came to the Arabian
Desert. My sisters and the little baby died on the way. We went to a
town, I do not know its name. The streets were full of dead, all cut
to pieces. They drove us over them. I kept dreaming about that. We
came to a place on the Desert, a hollow place in the sand, with hills
all around it. There were thousands of us there, many, many
thousands, all women and girl children. They herded us like sheep
into the hollow. Then it was dark and we heard firing all around. We
said, `The killing has begun.’ All night we waited for them, my
mother and I, we waited for them to reach us. But they did not come,
and in the morning, when we looked around, no one was killed. No one
was killed at all. They had not been killing us. They had been
signaling to the wild tribes that we were there. The Kurds came later
in the morning, in the daylight; the Kurds and many other kinds of
men from the Desert; they came over the hills and rode down and began
killing us. All day long they were killing; you see, there were so
many of us. All they did not think they could sell, they killed. They
kept on killing all night and in the morning – in the morning they
killed my mother.’
Jewish Liberation and The Revenge of the Turks

A declaration about Zionism released in January 25, 1915 by the
Turkish Authorities and published by Haherut, a Hebrew language
newspaper, demonstrates that Turkish hostility to Jews in Palestine
resulted from the threat of Jewish liberation. The declaration was:
`The exalted Government, in its resistance to the dangerous element
known as Zionism, which is struggling to create a Jewish government
in the Palestinian area of the Ottoman Kingdom and thus placing its
own people in jeopardy, has ordered the confiscation of all postal
stamps, Zionist flags, paper money, banknotes, etc., and has declared
the dissolution of the Zionist organizations and associations, which
were secretly established. It has now become known to us that other
mischief makers are maliciously engaged in libelous attempts to
assert that our measures are directed against all Jews. These have
no application to all of those Jews who uphold our covenant…We hope
and pray that they will be forever safe, as in the past…It is only
the Zionists and Zionism, that corrupt incendiary and rebellious
element, together with other groups with such delusionary
aspirations, which we must vanquish.’
Yair Auron, in his book The Banality of Indifference, Zionism and the
Armenian Genocide, wrote how the Turks almost annihilated the Jewish
community of Palestine because of the threat of Zionism. He wrote:
`In the spring of 1917, the small Jewish community in Palestine was
stunned by an order issued by the Turkish authorities for the
deportation of the 5,000 Jews from Tel Aviv to the small farming
villages in the Sharon Plain and the Galilee. This may have been the
beginning of a plan to deport the Jews in the villages and in the
Jerusalem region as an emergency war measure, and the decree aroused
grave concern about the future of the Jewish settlement in the
country. When the deportation order became known to the Nili
organization [a hebrew spy organization], its members publicized the
plan in the world press. American Jewry was shocked, and the nations
fighting against Turkey released reports on Turkish intentions to
exterminate the Jews in Palestine, as they had already done to the
Armenians. Public opinion in the neutral countries, as well as in
Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was outraged and Jamal Pasha
was forced to reconsider his plan of action.
Mustafa Kemal’s Reforms and Turkish Humanitarianism

Mustafa Kemal believed that Islam was responsible for Turkish enmity
toward the Western world as well as Turkish regression. In a speech
he gave in March 1923 he said:
“You know there is an unforgiving enmity between the societies of the
Muslim world and the masses of the Christian world. Muslims became
eternal enemies of Christians, and Christians those of Muslims. They
viewed each other as non-believers, fanatics. The two worlds
co-existed with this fanaticism and enmity. As a result of this
enmity, the Muslim world was distanced from the western progress that
took a new form and color every century. Because, Muslims viewed
progress with disdain and disgust. At the same time, the Muslim world
had to hold on to its arms as a result of this enmity that lasted for
centuries between the two groups. This continuous occupation with
arms, enmity, and disdain for western progress constitute another
important cause of our regression.”
Mustafa Kemal abolished the Caliphate, replaced Shariah rule with
penal codes based on European models, emancipated women, enforced
equality for all citizens regardless of religion, adopted modern
Western clothing and the Latin script, and abolished the religious
education system.
It is possible that Mustafa Kemal’s reforms improved the attitude of
the Turks toward Turkish Jews, and made possible the heroic and
humanitarian efforts made by men such as Salahattin Ulkumen to save
Turkish Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

The Failure of Democracy in Turkey
In 1924 and again in 1930 President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk approved
the formation of opposition parties in his effort to introduce
democracy in Turkey. As soon as the parties began to speak publicly,
they drew wide spread political support, and it became clear that
people were dissatisfied with the governments secularist and economic
policies. In both cases, the parties were promptly disbanded. The
next attempt to transition toward a multiparty democracy occurred in
1945. The president of Turkey, Ismet Inonu, agreed to allow a
multiparty system and opposition parties quickly formed. The
Democratic opposition party (DP), that supported bringing Islam into
politics won the election but opposition to it grew. The DP
responded with legislation that restricted freedom of speech and the
press. In 1960, the military overthrew the DP government. In the
next election Turkish voters voted in the successor parties to the
DP, the Justice Party and the New Turkey Party They essentially
put back into power the party that was ousted by the military in
preceding year. In 1995 Necmettin Erbakan was elected prime minister
of Turkey. His radicalism can be seen in a speech he gave to Kurds,
pleaded for their support “to save the world from European infidels.”
Three years later, the Constitutional Court banned the Welfare Party
on the grounds that it was engaged in fundamentalist activity and was
violating the secular principles of the Turkish constitution. In the
1999 elections most of the former members of the Welfare party were
reelected to parliament as members of the new Virtue party. Today,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party is
prime minister even though he was sentenced to jail in 1998 for
inciting religious hatred. If it wasn’t for the military, Turkey
would probably have reverted to a Shariah state long ago. There are
many who complain that because of the military Turkey is not
democratic enough, the truth is that without the military Turkey
would not be democratic at all.
The opinions of the Turkish masses are moving against the United
States and Israel partly as a result of Prime Minister Erdogan
governments influence over the media according to an article by Soner
Cagaptay in the Middle East Quarterly. The growing influence of
Islam and the growing hostility toward Israel and the United States
is alarming because it indicates that Turkey is regressing from the
enlightenment that made possible the rescue of Jews during World War
II toward the dark ages of Turkey’s fundamentalist past.

Should Turkey be Accepted into the European Union?
The secular Turkish army has been a stabilizing force on Turkey in
the past but if Turkey joins the European Union it is unlikely to be
able to play this role. The Anatolia news agency quoted the
European Union envoy to Turkey, Ambassador Hansjorg Kretschmer, as
saying that `the European Turkey’s EU-inspired democracy reforms will
be incomplete if the country fails to curb the influence its powerful
army wields in politics’ If the influence of the army is eliminated
Europe may find itself with an Islamic army in its midst.
Some European Leaders in their eagerness to appease the Islamic world
are oblivious to this threat. New EU commissioner Olli Rehnn said on
Oct. 20 that “Turkey’s EU membership will open new horizons for both
Turkey and the Union and bring forth new challenges.” On the same day
Germany’s foreign minister Joschka Fischer went a step further and
declared that Turkish entry to the EU would be as important for
Europe as the D-Day invasion 60 years ago – a key way to liberate
Europe from the threat of insecurity from the Middle East and
“terrorist ideas.”
In light of these comments by European leaders, I think the most
suitable way to finish this article is with the final sentence of
Marjorie Housepian Dobkin’s book The Smyrna Affair.
`The course of history in recent years suggests that the ultimate
victims may be those who delude themselves.’
___________________________________________________
Appendix

Here is a corroborating account to that told by Serge Trifkovic about
the tragic attack on the Armenian Patriarch Chrysostomos as told by
Marjorie Housepian Dobkin. Archbishop Chrysostomos tried to protect
his Armenian flock from the depredations of the Turks, and when given
an opportunity to flee by an American friend refused to abandon them.
Marjorie Dobkin recounts his fate below:
`The Patriarch was walking slowly down the steps of the Konak when
the [Turkish] General appeared on the balcony and cried out to
waiting mob, ‘Treat him as he deserves!’ The crowd fell upon
Chrysostomos with guttural shrieks and dragged him down the street
until they reached a barber shop where Ismael, the Jewish proprietor,
was peering nervously from his doorway. Someone pushed the barber
aside, grabbed a white sheet, and tied it around Chrysostomos’s neck,
shouting, ‘Give him a shave!’
“They tore out the Patriarch’s beard, gouged out his eyes with
knives, cut off his ears, his nose, and his hands. A dozen French
marines who had accompanied Chrysostomos to the government house were
standing by, beside themselves. Several of the men jumped
instinctively forward to intervene, but the officer in charge forbade
them to move. ‘He had his hand on his gun, though he was trembling
himself,’ one of the men said later, ‘so we dared not lift ours.
They finished Chrysostomos there before our eyes.”