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.”
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