Excuse me but Eastern Turkey has always been a Turkish land for centuries. It was part of Ottoman Empire and today's territories have been recognised by international treaties... So are you saying the Armenians should retake east Turkey, the Greeks should retake West Anatolia and Istanbul, and North Eastern Turkey. Is this what your simplistic mind thinks of?
Today's Turks are not responsible what had happened to Armenians 90 years ago just like the Americans are not responsible of their crimes against Indians. There is no such international law that binds Turkey to pay compensation...
Jews got compensation from Germany because the German state was created by the occupation forces, i.e. USA, France and UK. Turkey has not such obligation.
Armenian “genocide” in The Washington Post
by YeReVaN » Wed May 25, 2005 11:28 pm
Excuse me but Eastern Turkey has always been a Turkish land for centuries. It was part of Ottoman Empire and today's territories have been recognised by international treaties... So are you saying the Armenians should retake east Turkey, the Greeks should retake West Anatolia and Istanbul, and North Eastern Turkey. Is this what your simplistic mind thinks of?
Obviously you don't know your country's history. How come Ani that is located in "Eastern Turkey" was Armenia's capital. Also called the city of 1001 churches.
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YeReVaN - Contributor
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by YeReVaN » Wed May 25, 2005 11:29 pm
So are you saying the Armenians should retake east Turkey, the Greeks should retake West Anatolia and Istanbul, and North Eastern Turkey. Is this what your simplistic mind thinks of?
You are putting words in my mouth. Who even said anything about Greeks?
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YeReVaN - Contributor
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by YeReVaN » Wed May 25, 2005 11:37 pm
Just read this, it tells a lot about your contry. It is NOT an Armenian website. It is the website of International Human Rights Council.
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genoci ... nocide.htm
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genoci ... nocide.htm
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YeReVaN - Contributor
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by YeReVaN » Thu May 26, 2005 12:44 am
THE GREEK HOLOCAUST OF THRACE,
ASIA MINOR AND PONTOS
What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia, unto Ephesus and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira and unto Sardis and unto Philadelphia and unto Laodicea. (Apoc. I11).
The seven churches, the seven torches of light of the Greek-Christian civilization are no longer burning. The land of Asia Minor, an area where for 3000 years Greek civilization flourished is now being trampled by foreign invaders: the Turks.
The Turks invaded Asia Minor in two waves: The Seljuks were first at the end of the 11th century and the Ottomans came later, at the beginning of the l3th century.
Using indiscriminately force, murder, genocide, and Turcification they managed to hold on to a foreign land expelling or exterminating its natural residents: Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, and Arabs.
In the 8th century, the Oguz Turks, a semi-savage nomadic people moved westward from their homeland in Mongolia, and settled in what is today West Turkestan.
The Seljuks, a sect of the Oguz Turks, moved further in the direction of Persia and today's Iraq, where they served as mercenaries for the caliphs of Baghdad.
From this encounter with the advanced Persian and Arab civilizations, they enriched their poor vocabulary, adopted the Arabic script and became Muslims retaining simultaneously their warring nomad characteristics.
Their king, Alp Arslan (1063-1072), unified the various Seljuk factions, invaded Armenia, and sacked its capital of Ani in 1064. After that he and his armies invaded Byzantium and following the critical battle at Manzikert (1071) where the Byzantines were defeated, the Seljuks occupied a large part of the Asia Minor provinces of Byzantium. Previous to the invasion, there was not a single Turk living in these provinces.
In this foreign, for the Turks land there were thus established a number of Seljuk controlled emirates.
After a short period of time the Byzantines and the Crusaders dissolved nearly all of these emirates, except one whose capital was Iconium. This had been named as the Sultanate of Roum in other words the land of the Romans, as was the official title of the Greek Byzantine Empire, which was a continuation and succession of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The raids by Genghis Khan's (1167-1227) Mongols forced another Turkish tribe, led by Suleyman-Shah, to abandon Turkistan and to head towards the west. This group tried to settle in Eastern Asia Minor, but the Armenians and Kurds ousted them. In an attempt to cross the Euphrates river, their leader was drowned and buried there, which ever since has been known as <<Turk-mezari>>, or the <<tomb of the Turk>> A title which is indicative of how alien the Turks were in these areas.
The tribe then moved toward the Sultanate of Roum where it settled often assuming the role of border-guards. Suleyman's grandson, Osman, (1259-1326), took over the title of Sultan from the Seljuks and he gave his name to the Turkish people: The Ottomans.
The leaders of the Osmanlis quickly realized that since they comprised a minority of conquerors it would be difficult for them to control the occupied lands, and simultaneously to pursue further conquests without taking certain <<special measures>>.
Thus, they decided to adopt and apply harsh methods previously unknown to the whole world. Methods, which were never repeated again by another nation on earth. The primary measures taken were as follows:
They declared their state a warrior or <<Gazi>> state. In other words, a state that was bound to declare holy war (Jihad) against the non-believers. This way, they were able to bring together all kinds of adventurers, who were willing to fight either for ideological reasons, or for just the spoils of the war.
They adopted the inhumane measure of forcibly recruiting young Christian children. In other words, they forcibly took male children of the enslaved Christian families (mainly Greeks. and later also Armenians Bulgarians, Albanians and Serbs), and brought them up in special camps They conditioned them to become fanatic Turks and relentless killers to their own people. These children would grow up to believe that their father was the Sultan and that if they were to die in battle they would go to heaven. Thus, because of this New Army, or Janissaries, (Yeni-ceri in Turkish) the Turks continued to pursue their conquests.
They slaughtered systematically millions of Asia Minor's inhabitants, in order to change the ethnic character of the land. It has been estimated that during the seven centuries of Turkish presence in Asia Minor several millions of Greeks, at least two-three million Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Syrians, but also Serbs, and Bulgarians in Europe, were systematically massacred. In the 20th century alone, it has been estimated that approximately 1,5 million Armenians and more than 1 million Greeks were exterminated.
In this manner, the Turks managed to hold on to Asia Minor, a foreign land for them, where Greek civilizations had flourished for 2.000 years before the appearance of the Turks.
The Turks just destroyed these civilizations and unfortunately did not even try to take advantage of its accomplishments.
In two previous occasions the Greek people contributed in civilizing their conquerors, as was the case with the Romans and the Franks. One must possess a cultural identity to be able to absorb what is creative and good from other civilizations. Unfortunately, the conquering Turks lacked such an identity.
The Turks also failed to administer their subject peoples within the Ottoman Empire. There were no <<laws>> in the civilized sense of the word. The Sultan's word was the law in the capital and arbitrary rule of local representatives was the law in the provinces. The property, honor, and life of the conquered were completely at the mercy of the occasional Turkish official.
The only bond that kept the multiethnic empire together was the crude use of force-ultimately the butchery-of the rulers. Slaughter was the rule without concern for innocence or guilt.
Under these conditions the Turkish administration was truly detestable to all the subject people who suffered and patiently waited for each opportunity to throw off the Ottoman yoke.
The Turks failed to assimilate the various nationalities within their empire. They could not also administer them efficiently, not even control the economy because commerce and industry was left in the hands of the Greeks, Armenians and Jews, while the Turks kept busy with governing and simultaneously exploiting the profits while terrorizing the inhabitants.
For the enslaved people to be finally liberated from their rulers there took place a series of revolutions, which led to the establishment of independent states. In 1908 the Young Turk revolution forced the Sultan to grant a constitution to the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
In spite of the apparent liberalism of the formally bourgeois revolution, which was spearheaded by the military without the participation of the people, there continued to develop additional centrifugal tendencies as they did in the times of the Sultan's despotism. For those nations still within the Empire whose fellow nationals had established independent states, e. g. the Greeks- it was natural for them to seek union with their free compatriots. Those peoples still within the Empire that had not attained separate statehood, e.g. the Armenians, and the Kurds, focused all their energies towards the attainment of self-determination and the establishment of autonomous national homelands.
The Young Turks sought to rid themselves of troublesome non-Turkish ethnic groups so that they could build a homogeneous Turkish state and so they could avoid further mutilation of Turkish controlled territory in areas where non-Turks were in the majority, such as Eastern Thrace,
Western Asia Minor and Pontos, where the Greeks were in the majority, Eastern Asia Minor where the Armenians were in the majority and, Southeastern Asia Minor where the Kurds were in the majority.
Thus, the supposedly liberal and constitutionally oriented Young Turks returned to the usual Sultanic abrasiveness and brutality, which now became much more organized and systematic and assumed genocidal proportions.
The massacres were premeditated: It was decided that <<the Ottomanisation of all Turkish citizens, which never succeeded through persuasion, had to be done by the force of arms>>,
This was stated in the L o n d o n T i m e s on the 3rd of October 1911 summarizing the proceedings of the Council of Union and Progress (The Young Turks).
At first, the persecutions took place against the Greeks, made under the pretext of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Persecution took the form of lootings, expulsions and murders. After the wars, persecution continued even more intensively, to the point where on the 25 of May 1914 the Ecumenical Patriarchate was forced to declare that the Orthodox Church was <<under attack>>.
The Patriarchate, further, in a show of protest and mourning, suspended the activities of Greek churches and Greek schools throughout Turkey.
After the declaration of World War I, the Turks found the perfect opportunity to organize more effectively the massacres against ethnic minorities, so that they could finally transform their empire into a homogeneous nation-state.
Prominent officers of the Young Turks movement, while serving as members of the government, organized the expulsion of the inhabitants as well as the lootings and massacres that were perpetrated against them. Specifically, Talaat Pasha, minister of the interior, was prominent as the mastermind of the pogroms. However, the entire Turkish state administration participated in the organization and the execution of the extermination program.
They began with the genocide of the Armenians, who did not possess a state, which would rush to their aid and followed it up with mass expulsions and massacres of the Greeks. The victims of this period are over 2.5 million people of which 1.5 million were Armenians. In the chronological Index one can see detailed figures regarding the persecution of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Thrace and Pontos.
After the end of World War I, the Allies recognized that the Turkish government could not protect the property, honor, and life of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire.
They assigned to Greece the responsibility to administer Eastern Thrace and the Smyrna district. This arrangement was contained in the Treaty of Sevres. Simultaneously, there was established a separate and independent Pontian state.
In 1920, Alexander Millerand, president of the Supreme Allied Council stated: <<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>>.
The Turkish government signed the Treaty of Sevres but Mustafa Kemal refused to recognize it.
After 40 long months of war, during which Kemal's forces secured considerable foreign assistance, the Greek military front in Anatolia collapsed.
The Turks reoccupied Asia Minor and entered Smyrna on September 8, 1922. In Smyrna, in the meantime, there was an influx of refugees from various parts of Asia Minor. And the conquering Turks set the city on fire and unleashed the last phase of the genocide against the Greeks and Armenians.
These were moments of unbelievable horror. The pier turned red by the blood of the victims. The bishop of Smyrna Chrysostomos was publicly ridiculed and then slaughtered. Events were too horrible to even describe. The American Consul in Smyrna, George Horton, gives a detailed and objective picture of the chilling Turkish crimes in his book T h e B l i g h t o f A s i a (Indianapolis: Bobb and Merryl, 1925).
The Treaty of Lausanne ended the Greek-Turkish war and imposed the unjust and mandatory exchange of 300,000 Turks from Greece for the 1,400,000 Greeks that survived the holocaust.
The Greek refugees of Asia Minor, without being consulted had to give up their ancestral homes to the Turks, after almost 4,000 years of glorious and productive history.
Through the unjust actions of massacre and persecution of Greeks and Armenians, the contemporary Turkish state was thus created. It was a state founded on crime, the state about which French prime minister George Clemanceau said on the 25th of June, 1919: <<We do not find even one example in Europe, Asia, or Africa, where the imposition of Turkish sovereignty had not been followed by a decline in material prosperity, and by the impoverishment of its culture. Also there does not exist one example where liberation from Turkish control was not followed by the advancement of material prosperity and an improvement of the cultural level. Whether dealing with Christians or Muslims, the Turk has managed to bring destruction wherever he conquered. The Turk has never been able to develop in peace that which he won through conquest>>.
On the 26th of November 1979, the New York Times wrote quite characteristically: <<According to the most recent statistics, the Christian population in Turkey was diminished from (4.500.000) at the beginning of this century to just about 150,000. Of those, the Greeks are no more than 7,000 yet, in 1923 they were as many as 1, 2 million>> (After the massacres of many hundreds of thousands).
In the pages, which follow you, will find photographs of the cultural presence of Greeks in Asia Minor and irrefutable photographic evidence of a small sample of the Turkish atrocities, which managed to destroy this splendid civilization and to persecute millions of people.
Even though human justice has not yet punished the Turks, we believe that there is a Divine Justice to which the Turks will sooner or later be answerable.
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/ ... ocide.html
Most Armenians in America are children or grandchildren of the survivors, although there are still many survivors amongst us.
Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported and killed. Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes.
The Armenian Genocide was masterminded by the Central Committee of the Young Turk Party (Committee for Union and Progress [Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyet, in Turkish]), which was dominated by Mehmed Talât [Pasha], Ismail Enver [Pasha], and Ahmed Djemal [Pasha]. They were a racist group whose ideology was articulated by Zia Gökalp, Dr. Mehmed Nazim, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir.
The Armenian Genocide was directed by a Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa) set up by the Committee of Union and Progress, which created special "butcher battalions," made up of violent criminals released from prison.
Some righteous Ottoman officials such as Celal, governor of Aleppo; Mazhar, governor of Ankara; and Reshid, governor of Kastamonu, were dismissed for not complying with the extermination campaign. Any common Turks who protected Armenians were killed.
The Armenian Genocide occurred in a systematic fashion, which proves that it was directed by the Young Turk government.
First the Armenians in the army were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed.
Then the Armenian political and intellectual leaders were rounded up on April 24, 1915, and then killed.
Finally, the remaining Armenians were called from their homes, told they would be relocated, and then marched off to concentration camps in the desert between Jerablus and Deir ez-Zor where they would starve and thirst to death in the burning sun.
On the march, often they would be denied food and water, and many were brutalized and killed by their "guards" or by "marauders." The authorities in Trebizond, on the Black Sea coast, did vary this routine: they loaded Armenians on barges and sank them out at sea.
The Turkish government today denies that there was an Armenian genocide and claims that Armenians were only removed from the eastern "war zone." The Armenian Genocide, however, occurred all over Anatolia [present-day Turkey], and not just in the so-called "war zone." Deportations and killings occurred in the west, in and around Ismid (Izmit) and Broussa (Bursa); in the center, in and around Angora (Ankara); in the south-west, in and around Konia (Konya) and Adana (which is near the Mediterranean Sea); in the central portion of Anatolia, in and around Diyarbekir (Diyarbakir), Harpout (Harput), Marash, Sivas (Sepastia), Shabin Kara-Hissar (þebin Karahisar), and Ourfa (Urfa); and on the Black Sea coast, in and around Trebizond (Trabzon), all of which are not part of a war zone. Only Erzeroum, Bitlis, and Van in the east were in the war zone.
Representatives of the British, French, Russian, German, and Austrian governments—namely all the major Powers, condemned the Armenian Genocide at the time. The first three were foes of the Ottoman Empire, the latter two, allies of the Ottoman Empire. The United States, neutral towards the Ottoman Empire, also condemned the Armenian Genocide and was the chief spokesman in behalf of the Armenians.
The American people, via local Protestant missionaries, did the most to save the wretched remnants of the death marches, the orphaned children.
Despite Turkish denial, there is no doubt about the Armenian Genocide. For example, German ambassador Count von Wolff-Metternich, Turkey's ally in World War I, wrote his government in 1916 saying: "The Committee [of Union and Progress] demands the annihilation of the last remnants of the Armenians and the [Ottoman] government must bow to its demands."
German consuls stationed in Turkey, including Vice Consul Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richner of Erzerum [Erzurum] who was Adolf Hitler's chief political advisor in the 1920s, were eyewitnesses. Hitler said to his generals on the eve of sending his Death's Heads units into Poland, "Go, kill without mercy . . . who today remembers the annihilation of the Armenians."
Henry Morgenthau Sr., the neutral American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, sent a cable to the U.S. State Department in 1915:
"Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses [sic] it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion."
Morgenthau's successor as Ambassador to Turkey, Abram Elkus, cabled the U.S. State Department in 1916 that the Young Turks were continuing an “ . . . unchecked policy of extermination through starvation, exhaustion, and brutality of treatment hardly surpassed even in Turkish history."
Only one Turkish government that of Damad Ferit Pasha has ever recognized the Armenian genocide. In fact, that Turkish government held war crimes trials and condemned to death the major leaders responsible.
The Turkish court concluded that the leaders of the Young Turk government were guilty of murder. "This fact has been proven and verified." It maintained that the genocidal scheme was carried out with as much secrecy as possible. That a public facade was maintained of "relocating" the Armenians. That they carried out the killing by a secret network. That the decision to eradicate the Armenians was not a hasty decision, but "the result of extensive and profound deliberations."
Ismail Enver Pasha, Ahmed Cemal Pasha, Mehmed Talât Bey, and a host of others were convicted by the Turkish court and condemned to death for "the extermination and destruction of the Armenians."
The Permanent People's Tribunal recognized the Armenian Genocide on April 16, 1984.
The European Parliament voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide on June 18, 1987.
President Bush issued a news release in 1990 calling on all Americans to join with Armenians on April 24 in commemorating "the more than a million Armenian people who were victims."
President Clinton issued a news release on April 24, 1994, to commemorate the "tragedy" that befell the Armenians in 1915.
The Russian Duma (the lower house of the bicameral Russian legislature) voted on April 20, 1994, to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
Israel officially condemned the Armenian Genocide as Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin proclaimed on the floor of the Knesset (the Israeli legislature), on April 27, 1994, in answer to the claims of the Turkish Ambassador, that "It was not war. It was most certainly massacre and genocide, something the world must remember."
The Armenian genocide is similar to the history of the Holocaust in many respects. Both people adhere to an ancient religion. Both were religious minorities of their respective states. Both have a history of persecution. Both have new democracies. Enemies surround both. Both are talented and creative minorities who have been persecuted out of envy and obscurantism.
THE ISLANDS OF IMVROS AND TENEDOS
The Greek islands of Imvros and Tenedos were ceded to Turkey by the Treaty of Lauzanne (1923). These islands had been liberated from Ottoman control in 1912 by the Greek Navy. Under Article 14 of the Lausanne treaty, Turkey assumed the legal responsibility of ruling these islands with a special self-governing status, which was to be exercised by local authorities. Under these provisions order would be kept by a police force recruited from the local Greek population that would also have the responsibility of overseeing the Greek educational system.
Turkey followed here its usual tactic of never abiding by its international obligations. Numbers speak for themselves. In 1920 the islands of Imvros and Tenedos had a population of approximately 10,000 Greeks. Today only a few hundred Greeks remain. In order to accomplish this drastic result, the Turks took a number of measures:
They expropriated the best properties, without compensation, in order to deprive the residents of their means of survival.
Greeks who traveled abroad were not allowed to return and their property was confiscated.
They forbade the teaching of the Greek language.
Imvros was converted into a prison without walls for convicted Turkish felons who terrorized the Greek residents.
Using such dreadful measures, the Turks managed to bring decay to the way of life of the Greek inhabitants and they thought that they would enjoy the fruits of their crimes in perpetuity.
THE KURDISH DRAMA
Kurdistan is today partitioned among its four neighbors.
Turkey alone occupies half Kurdistan. The Turkish Kurdistan covers an area of 230.000 km2, represents 30% of the whole area of Turkey and is inhabited by approximately 12 million Kurds.
The remaining area of Kurdistan is occupied by Iraq, Iran and a small part by Syria.
In Iran, the Kurds have sufficient freedom and a relative autonomy. In Iraq, they have also autonomy, with their own parliament in Erbil, in north Iraq.
The only country which, not only does not recognize any human right to the Kurds, but also forbids them to speak their own language, to sing their songs, to have newspapers, books, schools, culture, is Turkey. For this reason, the Kurdish problem is mostly a problem, for the part of Kurdistan, which is enslaved to Turkey
The Kurds are a Indo-European people, related to the Persians. They inhabited the lands where they live today, 35 centuries ago. Their language is related to the Persian language and was written since the 7th century B.C. According to the latest scientific research, they are considered descendants of the Medes. Thus, they have absolutely no relation (racial, linguistic, anthropologic) to their Turkish oppressors, who are of Mongolic descent. They also have no relation with the Arabs who are of Semitic descent. The only common characteristic among these three nations is the Moslem religion.
The Kurds enter history from the time of their acceptance of Islam after the occupation of their country by the army of Chalifa Omar in 637A. D. Saladin, the heroic opponent of the Crusaders, is the great hero of the Kurds during the middle Ages. Saladin formed a great empire, which survived even after his death, in 1193.
The Mongolian attacks of the beginning of the l3th century dissolved the Kurdish states. Because of the separation into many autonomous states and the feudal organization of society, a great part of Kurdistan was later conquered by the Ottoman Empire and the rest was conquered by Persia.
There is hardly any parallel in history, to the struggles of the Kurds for their independence. In 1806 Babazade Abdul Rahman organized the first revolt against the Turks in Mosul. Since then, there have been 38 Kurdish revolts and uprisings.
The greatest was that which took place in 1925,led by Sheikh Said. It lasted almost 20 months. The totalitarian regime of Kemal crushed the Kurds and drowned their revolt in blood.
The Kurds were slaughtered or hanged by thousands. The Turkish newspaper VAKIT, wrote characteristically in 7-5-1925 <<Wherever a Turkish bayonet appears, there is no Kurdish problem>>. This is always the Turkish response to peoples demanding their independence. The Kurdish revolts in Turkey had 1.500.000 victims. There is constantly for 50 years martial law in the eastern Turkish provinces, where the Kurds live, and the district is forbidden to foreigners.
The Turkish authorities want to ignore the Kurds, they call them mountainous Turks and they deprive them of any human right. Blood, violence, oppression, have not erased the desire of the Kurdish people to live independent not under this totalitarian enslavement where they are today.
The Turkish military regime has recently intensified the oppression and extermination of Kurds. Thousands of them rot in prisons while others live in caves. It would however be wrong to believe that violence against the Kurds was less intense under the so-called democratic regime of Turkey. Policy is one and the same for any Turkish regime: The policy of extermination of every minority.
The Treaty of Sevres, which has not been officially annulled, mentions an autonomous, independent Kurdistan. The Kurds have the right to free themselves from Turkish yoke. Kurdish independence must become a reality. Give your help to that end.
In the pages that follow you will see photographs of the drama and the struggle of the Kurdish people.
THE NIGHT OF TERROR IN CONSTANTINOPLE
Under the terms of the agreement regarding the exchange of populations in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek population of Constantinople-a thriving community-and the Muslim community residing in Western Thrace were exempted from the exchange process.
In the beginning of the 20th century there were 300,000 Greeks residing in Constantinople.
They had managed to survive there despite centuries of oppression and persecution under the Ottoman yoke. But the Turks were determined to expel all Greeks from their ancient home using all available means. Thus, the Turks systematically used the following measures in order to accomplish their objective:
a) In May 1941, large numbers of young men ranging in age from 18-38. Were conscripted into the Turkish army from the Greek and Armenian communities The Turkish intention was to exterminate these young men through the well-known method of <<forced-labor battalions>>. If this extermination plan was not successful it was due to protests from the Western allies and the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad in December 1942. Seeing the tides of war shifting, the Turkish authorities permitted the discharge of these soldiers.
b) On 11 November 1942, the Turkish government passed a law regarding taxation of property of non-Muslims, known as the VA RLIK VE RGISI. Through this! Non-Muslim citizens had to submit, without the right to appeal, to the discretion and arbitrary judgment of the tax clerks. The tax clerks, in turn, were instructed to appraise property at amounts many times over the actual value of each property. Then, if the individual concerned was unable to make payments of the enormous tax share (quota), the property was seized and the unfortunate owners were exiled to ACKALE, in Anatolia.
As a result (of the use) of these harsh and inhuman measures, by 1955 only 25,000 people were left, rather than the 450,000 that should have been their number given a normal rate of growth in 35 years.
On the night of the 6th September 1955, and using the Cyprus situation as a pretext, the Turks dealt the coupdegrace to the remaining inhabitants. The whole story of this pogrom is as follows:
On Saturday the 3rd of September 1955, the wife of the Turkish Consul in Thessaloniki asked for, and received, from a photographer in Thessaloniki supposedly for a keepsake a series of photographs and films of the Turkish Consulate and the neighboring home where Kemal Ataturk was born. The very next day she and her family left for Turkey.
At ten past midnight on the 6th of September 1955, in the garden of the Consulate, between the two buildings, dynamite exploded resulting in broken windows in both buildings. The Greek authorities rushed immediately to the scene. They established that two more explosive devices had been positioned in the Consulate yard and that within the building there was only one Turkish guard. In the investigation that followed it was determined that the explosives were placed there by the guard and his accomplice, a Turkish student at the Law School of the University of Thessaloniki, Oktai Egin Faik, who had brought the dynamite from Turkey a few days earlier.
On the 6th of September, Turkish newspapers using forged versions of the photos of the Turkish consul's wife and even before the explosion took place in Greece, depicted Kemal's birthplace as totally destroyed. By the evening, newspapers all over Turkey knew of the alleged destruction of Kemal's home setting off waves of anger among the Turkish populace.
The Turkish authorities then transported large groups of people in trains and military vehicles from Anatolia to Constantinople.
The attack by the angry mobs began at 5: 50 P.M on the 6th of September 1955 and ended at 02: 00 A.M on the 7th of September 1955. The police calmly assisted and even guided the mobs, in their relentless path of destruction.
At 00: 20 A.M on the 7th of September 1955 martial law was finally declared, at 02: 00 A.M curfew began and at 02: 30 A.M the authorities had restored a semblance of order.
Screaming slogans <<Today your property, tomorrow your lives>> the mobs had perpetrated terrible crimes. Those who guided them knew that by terrorizing the last Greek residents of Constantinople they would compel them to desert their homeland, once and for all. Simultaneously by destroying monuments, which were proof of the glorious Greek past of Constantinople, they would eradicate even future reminders of the Greek presence.
The results of the vandalisms were:
The Theological School of Halki, the Marasleios School, The Monestary of Valoukli, the Zappeio School for Girls and many other sites, suffered great damage.
Of the 83 Greek Orthodox churches in the <<Polis>> 59 were burned and most others suffered serious damage to the icons and ancient paintings of great value.
The tombs of Patriarchs were destroyed, Christian cemeteries and ossuaries were defiled;
3,000 homes were looted and destroyed;
4348 Greek stores were looted and destroyed;
200 Greek women were raped;
Hundreds of Greeks were ill-treated or tortured, such as the old Bishop of Derkon Iakovos; the metropolitan of Ilioupolis Yennadios, whose beard was cut off and who was then dragged through the streets so that he would die shortly thereafter from ill-treatment; and Bishop Pamphilou Yennadios that was thrown into the burned ruins of Valoukli;
15 Greeks were murdered and among them a 90 year old monk at the Valoukli Monastery, Chrys. Mantas, who was burned alive. Many others in the monastery were seriously wounded.
After the pogrom a great portion of the Greek population left Constantinople to save their lives.
On the 20th of September, 1975, in a special 35 page Survey section of the influential English magazine, The Economist, it was written: <<Turkish charges that the Moslem population in Western Thrace is harried by the Greek authorities are gross exaggerations. In 1923 there were 300,000 Greeks living in Constantinople and 110,000 Turks living in Thrace. Today, there are 15,000 Greeks living in Istanbul and 120,000 Turks in Thrace. The Greeks ask, with some justification, which country has been putting the pressure on which minority>>. (Survey-15).
It is important for us to realize that today, 1982; only 4,000 Greeks still remain in Constantinople.
In the pages to follow you will find irrefutable photographic evidence of a typical sample of Turkish cruelty, which managed to destroy the Hellenic population of Constantinople.
THE PERSECUTIONS OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES
Of Nestorians and Syrian orthodox of South East Turkey.
A-NESTORIANS. This race lives in the Hakkari province near the border of Turkey with Iran and Iraq. They are considered descendants of ancient Assyrians. They are Christian monophysites (Nestorians). In the years 1915-1918 they allied with the Armenians and placed their hopes of independence on the Russians. In 1918 the Nestorian patriarch was murdered. In order to avoid persecutions and massacres by the Turks, many Nestorians fled to Iraq. In 1920, the Nestorians were organized and armed by the British to form the so-called Assyrian troops, who tried to re-conquer their motherland, but failed.
In 1932, the British mandate of Iraq came to an end. The Nestorian community had difficulties with the Iraqi government and was forced to flee Iraq and go to Syria, Lebanon (where they live near the city of ZALEH) Cyprus and the United States. At present, a small number of Nestorians live in S.E. Turkey, where they have almost no human rights at all. B-SYRIAN-ORTHODOX. In S.E. Turkey, north of the Syrian Turkish border, in the region of the towns of Mardin and Midyat lived many centuries ago, thousands of people belonging to the Semitic race, speaking ancient Syrian (Aramaic) which was spoken in Palestine on the time when Christ was born, members of the monophysite church of the Jacobites (from the bishop Jacob Baradai). These people claim to descend from Asour and Aram, children of Sim, and that their ascendants belonged to the early Christians. These are the geographic, political, ethnological and religious characteristics of the so-called Syrian-orthodox.
After undergoing the Byzantine, Arab, and Latin rule (of the Crusaders) and a period of semi independence, the Syrian-orthodox were under the Ottoman Empire, in the l6th century. Because of religious difference, they had self-government with their own laws, courts of justice, and political (clerical) authority.
After the Ottoman Empire was dissolved, they were not assigned to Syria, as should have been the case, since, being of Semitic origin, they are related to the Arab-Syrians. Instead, they remained within the Turkish border. After Ataturk's westernization and his attempt to turn the state into a Turkish state, their self-government was abolished and persecutions began.
Some years ago, they had been fiercely persecuted because Turkish hatred, which in 1915 slaughtered the Armenians, did not always make distinction between the Christians of Anatolia. Thus, because of this <<mistake>> tens of thousands of Syrian Orthodox were slaughtered at the same time with the Armenians, as an extension of the Armenian genocide.
Today in Mardin-Midyat, live approximately 30.000 Syrian Orthodox, though 20 years ago; there lived 100.000 and 70 years ago, 200.000.
Until 1978, there were 50 churches and 10 monasteries, most of which have ancient gospels in manuscript.
The most important of these is the Mar Gabriel, where is the seat of a bishop, and where the ancient Syrian language is taught, and the ancient art of manuscript is practiced. In the Mar Yakoub monastery there is an imposing church if the 5th century and around it churches of the 3rd and 4th centuries, carved in the rock. The Deir UI Zafaran monastery once had 100 monks and was the seat of the Syrian-orthodox patriarch, who in 1954 was established in Damascus. In this monastery was taught the ancient Syrian language. In 1978, the Turkish ministry of education decreed this teaching illegal and sent away the teachers in order to obtain the Turcification of this minority.
At present, especially since 1974, there are continuously organized suppressions of the Syrian-Orthodox minority. These suppressions are manifested with deliberate actions, such as attacks, kidnappings, murders burglaries, destruction of vineyards, and crops, thefts, forced weddings accompanied by forced acceptance of Islam. All these persecutions have forced many Syrian-Orthodox to emigrate. These persecutions are known and approved b the Turkish authorities in violation of the articles 37-45 of the Treaty of Lausanne, which stipulate the protection of minorities and the non-distinction among Turkish civilians, concerning their civil rights.
More distinctly, the provisions of the articles a) 38 § 1, b) 38 § 2, c) 39 § 3, d) 40 and e) 42 § 5 of the Treaty of Lausanne, stipulate that the Turkish government undertakes the obligation to provide respectively:
Total protection of life and freedom,
The possibility to exercise in freedom any faith, or dogma
Equal civilian rights to every Turkish citizen irrespectively of difference of religion
Equal rights for the installation of philanthropic, social institutions and schools for education and
Protection of churches, synagogues cemeteries and other religious institutions of the minorities.
None of all these stipulations and obligations that Turkey has undertaken under the Treaty of Lausanne has been respected by any Turkish government (democratic or fascist) of any political color. The minorities in Turkey have no human rights.
A very interesting research conducted by a Committee of the World Council of Churches (Avenue d Anderghem 23, Bruxelles) in 1979 reveals that the Turkish government is keeping no obligation. The guarantor Powers of the Treaty of Lausanne. i.e. Britain France, Italy and Japan, are thus obliged, according to article 44 § 2, to attract the attention to these violations that take place and to ask the Turkish government to change its attitude, and respect human rights and its signature on the Treaty. Otherwise, if the Treaty of Lausanne is abolished, the Treaty of Sevres must be applied.
ASIA MINOR AND PONTOS
What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia, unto Ephesus and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira and unto Sardis and unto Philadelphia and unto Laodicea. (Apoc. I11).
The seven churches, the seven torches of light of the Greek-Christian civilization are no longer burning. The land of Asia Minor, an area where for 3000 years Greek civilization flourished is now being trampled by foreign invaders: the Turks.
The Turks invaded Asia Minor in two waves: The Seljuks were first at the end of the 11th century and the Ottomans came later, at the beginning of the l3th century.
Using indiscriminately force, murder, genocide, and Turcification they managed to hold on to a foreign land expelling or exterminating its natural residents: Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, and Arabs.
In the 8th century, the Oguz Turks, a semi-savage nomadic people moved westward from their homeland in Mongolia, and settled in what is today West Turkestan.
The Seljuks, a sect of the Oguz Turks, moved further in the direction of Persia and today's Iraq, where they served as mercenaries for the caliphs of Baghdad.
From this encounter with the advanced Persian and Arab civilizations, they enriched their poor vocabulary, adopted the Arabic script and became Muslims retaining simultaneously their warring nomad characteristics.
Their king, Alp Arslan (1063-1072), unified the various Seljuk factions, invaded Armenia, and sacked its capital of Ani in 1064. After that he and his armies invaded Byzantium and following the critical battle at Manzikert (1071) where the Byzantines were defeated, the Seljuks occupied a large part of the Asia Minor provinces of Byzantium. Previous to the invasion, there was not a single Turk living in these provinces.
In this foreign, for the Turks land there were thus established a number of Seljuk controlled emirates.
After a short period of time the Byzantines and the Crusaders dissolved nearly all of these emirates, except one whose capital was Iconium. This had been named as the Sultanate of Roum in other words the land of the Romans, as was the official title of the Greek Byzantine Empire, which was a continuation and succession of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The raids by Genghis Khan's (1167-1227) Mongols forced another Turkish tribe, led by Suleyman-Shah, to abandon Turkistan and to head towards the west. This group tried to settle in Eastern Asia Minor, but the Armenians and Kurds ousted them. In an attempt to cross the Euphrates river, their leader was drowned and buried there, which ever since has been known as <<Turk-mezari>>, or the <<tomb of the Turk>> A title which is indicative of how alien the Turks were in these areas.
The tribe then moved toward the Sultanate of Roum where it settled often assuming the role of border-guards. Suleyman's grandson, Osman, (1259-1326), took over the title of Sultan from the Seljuks and he gave his name to the Turkish people: The Ottomans.
The leaders of the Osmanlis quickly realized that since they comprised a minority of conquerors it would be difficult for them to control the occupied lands, and simultaneously to pursue further conquests without taking certain <<special measures>>.
Thus, they decided to adopt and apply harsh methods previously unknown to the whole world. Methods, which were never repeated again by another nation on earth. The primary measures taken were as follows:
They declared their state a warrior or <<Gazi>> state. In other words, a state that was bound to declare holy war (Jihad) against the non-believers. This way, they were able to bring together all kinds of adventurers, who were willing to fight either for ideological reasons, or for just the spoils of the war.
They adopted the inhumane measure of forcibly recruiting young Christian children. In other words, they forcibly took male children of the enslaved Christian families (mainly Greeks. and later also Armenians Bulgarians, Albanians and Serbs), and brought them up in special camps They conditioned them to become fanatic Turks and relentless killers to their own people. These children would grow up to believe that their father was the Sultan and that if they were to die in battle they would go to heaven. Thus, because of this New Army, or Janissaries, (Yeni-ceri in Turkish) the Turks continued to pursue their conquests.
They slaughtered systematically millions of Asia Minor's inhabitants, in order to change the ethnic character of the land. It has been estimated that during the seven centuries of Turkish presence in Asia Minor several millions of Greeks, at least two-three million Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Syrians, but also Serbs, and Bulgarians in Europe, were systematically massacred. In the 20th century alone, it has been estimated that approximately 1,5 million Armenians and more than 1 million Greeks were exterminated.
In this manner, the Turks managed to hold on to Asia Minor, a foreign land for them, where Greek civilizations had flourished for 2.000 years before the appearance of the Turks.
The Turks just destroyed these civilizations and unfortunately did not even try to take advantage of its accomplishments.
In two previous occasions the Greek people contributed in civilizing their conquerors, as was the case with the Romans and the Franks. One must possess a cultural identity to be able to absorb what is creative and good from other civilizations. Unfortunately, the conquering Turks lacked such an identity.
The Turks also failed to administer their subject peoples within the Ottoman Empire. There were no <<laws>> in the civilized sense of the word. The Sultan's word was the law in the capital and arbitrary rule of local representatives was the law in the provinces. The property, honor, and life of the conquered were completely at the mercy of the occasional Turkish official.
The only bond that kept the multiethnic empire together was the crude use of force-ultimately the butchery-of the rulers. Slaughter was the rule without concern for innocence or guilt.
Under these conditions the Turkish administration was truly detestable to all the subject people who suffered and patiently waited for each opportunity to throw off the Ottoman yoke.
The Turks failed to assimilate the various nationalities within their empire. They could not also administer them efficiently, not even control the economy because commerce and industry was left in the hands of the Greeks, Armenians and Jews, while the Turks kept busy with governing and simultaneously exploiting the profits while terrorizing the inhabitants.
For the enslaved people to be finally liberated from their rulers there took place a series of revolutions, which led to the establishment of independent states. In 1908 the Young Turk revolution forced the Sultan to grant a constitution to the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
In spite of the apparent liberalism of the formally bourgeois revolution, which was spearheaded by the military without the participation of the people, there continued to develop additional centrifugal tendencies as they did in the times of the Sultan's despotism. For those nations still within the Empire whose fellow nationals had established independent states, e. g. the Greeks- it was natural for them to seek union with their free compatriots. Those peoples still within the Empire that had not attained separate statehood, e.g. the Armenians, and the Kurds, focused all their energies towards the attainment of self-determination and the establishment of autonomous national homelands.
The Young Turks sought to rid themselves of troublesome non-Turkish ethnic groups so that they could build a homogeneous Turkish state and so they could avoid further mutilation of Turkish controlled territory in areas where non-Turks were in the majority, such as Eastern Thrace,
Western Asia Minor and Pontos, where the Greeks were in the majority, Eastern Asia Minor where the Armenians were in the majority and, Southeastern Asia Minor where the Kurds were in the majority.
Thus, the supposedly liberal and constitutionally oriented Young Turks returned to the usual Sultanic abrasiveness and brutality, which now became much more organized and systematic and assumed genocidal proportions.
The massacres were premeditated: It was decided that <<the Ottomanisation of all Turkish citizens, which never succeeded through persuasion, had to be done by the force of arms>>,
This was stated in the L o n d o n T i m e s on the 3rd of October 1911 summarizing the proceedings of the Council of Union and Progress (The Young Turks).
At first, the persecutions took place against the Greeks, made under the pretext of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Persecution took the form of lootings, expulsions and murders. After the wars, persecution continued even more intensively, to the point where on the 25 of May 1914 the Ecumenical Patriarchate was forced to declare that the Orthodox Church was <<under attack>>.
The Patriarchate, further, in a show of protest and mourning, suspended the activities of Greek churches and Greek schools throughout Turkey.
After the declaration of World War I, the Turks found the perfect opportunity to organize more effectively the massacres against ethnic minorities, so that they could finally transform their empire into a homogeneous nation-state.
Prominent officers of the Young Turks movement, while serving as members of the government, organized the expulsion of the inhabitants as well as the lootings and massacres that were perpetrated against them. Specifically, Talaat Pasha, minister of the interior, was prominent as the mastermind of the pogroms. However, the entire Turkish state administration participated in the organization and the execution of the extermination program.
They began with the genocide of the Armenians, who did not possess a state, which would rush to their aid and followed it up with mass expulsions and massacres of the Greeks. The victims of this period are over 2.5 million people of which 1.5 million were Armenians. In the chronological Index one can see detailed figures regarding the persecution of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Thrace and Pontos.
After the end of World War I, the Allies recognized that the Turkish government could not protect the property, honor, and life of the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire.
They assigned to Greece the responsibility to administer Eastern Thrace and the Smyrna district. This arrangement was contained in the Treaty of Sevres. Simultaneously, there was established a separate and independent Pontian state.
In 1920, Alexander Millerand, president of the Supreme Allied Council stated: <<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>>.
The Turkish government signed the Treaty of Sevres but Mustafa Kemal refused to recognize it.
After 40 long months of war, during which Kemal's forces secured considerable foreign assistance, the Greek military front in Anatolia collapsed.
The Turks reoccupied Asia Minor and entered Smyrna on September 8, 1922. In Smyrna, in the meantime, there was an influx of refugees from various parts of Asia Minor. And the conquering Turks set the city on fire and unleashed the last phase of the genocide against the Greeks and Armenians.
These were moments of unbelievable horror. The pier turned red by the blood of the victims. The bishop of Smyrna Chrysostomos was publicly ridiculed and then slaughtered. Events were too horrible to even describe. The American Consul in Smyrna, George Horton, gives a detailed and objective picture of the chilling Turkish crimes in his book T h e B l i g h t o f A s i a (Indianapolis: Bobb and Merryl, 1925).
The Treaty of Lausanne ended the Greek-Turkish war and imposed the unjust and mandatory exchange of 300,000 Turks from Greece for the 1,400,000 Greeks that survived the holocaust.
The Greek refugees of Asia Minor, without being consulted had to give up their ancestral homes to the Turks, after almost 4,000 years of glorious and productive history.
Through the unjust actions of massacre and persecution of Greeks and Armenians, the contemporary Turkish state was thus created. It was a state founded on crime, the state about which French prime minister George Clemanceau said on the 25th of June, 1919: <<We do not find even one example in Europe, Asia, or Africa, where the imposition of Turkish sovereignty had not been followed by a decline in material prosperity, and by the impoverishment of its culture. Also there does not exist one example where liberation from Turkish control was not followed by the advancement of material prosperity and an improvement of the cultural level. Whether dealing with Christians or Muslims, the Turk has managed to bring destruction wherever he conquered. The Turk has never been able to develop in peace that which he won through conquest>>.
On the 26th of November 1979, the New York Times wrote quite characteristically: <<According to the most recent statistics, the Christian population in Turkey was diminished from (4.500.000) at the beginning of this century to just about 150,000. Of those, the Greeks are no more than 7,000 yet, in 1923 they were as many as 1, 2 million>> (After the massacres of many hundreds of thousands).
In the pages, which follow you, will find photographs of the cultural presence of Greeks in Asia Minor and irrefutable photographic evidence of a small sample of the Turkish atrocities, which managed to destroy this splendid civilization and to persecute millions of people.
Even though human justice has not yet punished the Turks, we believe that there is a Divine Justice to which the Turks will sooner or later be answerable.
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/ ... ocide.html
Most Armenians in America are children or grandchildren of the survivors, although there are still many survivors amongst us.
Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported and killed. Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes.
The Armenian Genocide was masterminded by the Central Committee of the Young Turk Party (Committee for Union and Progress [Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyet, in Turkish]), which was dominated by Mehmed Talât [Pasha], Ismail Enver [Pasha], and Ahmed Djemal [Pasha]. They were a racist group whose ideology was articulated by Zia Gökalp, Dr. Mehmed Nazim, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir.
The Armenian Genocide was directed by a Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa) set up by the Committee of Union and Progress, which created special "butcher battalions," made up of violent criminals released from prison.
Some righteous Ottoman officials such as Celal, governor of Aleppo; Mazhar, governor of Ankara; and Reshid, governor of Kastamonu, were dismissed for not complying with the extermination campaign. Any common Turks who protected Armenians were killed.
The Armenian Genocide occurred in a systematic fashion, which proves that it was directed by the Young Turk government.
First the Armenians in the army were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed.
Then the Armenian political and intellectual leaders were rounded up on April 24, 1915, and then killed.
Finally, the remaining Armenians were called from their homes, told they would be relocated, and then marched off to concentration camps in the desert between Jerablus and Deir ez-Zor where they would starve and thirst to death in the burning sun.
On the march, often they would be denied food and water, and many were brutalized and killed by their "guards" or by "marauders." The authorities in Trebizond, on the Black Sea coast, did vary this routine: they loaded Armenians on barges and sank them out at sea.
The Turkish government today denies that there was an Armenian genocide and claims that Armenians were only removed from the eastern "war zone." The Armenian Genocide, however, occurred all over Anatolia [present-day Turkey], and not just in the so-called "war zone." Deportations and killings occurred in the west, in and around Ismid (Izmit) and Broussa (Bursa); in the center, in and around Angora (Ankara); in the south-west, in and around Konia (Konya) and Adana (which is near the Mediterranean Sea); in the central portion of Anatolia, in and around Diyarbekir (Diyarbakir), Harpout (Harput), Marash, Sivas (Sepastia), Shabin Kara-Hissar (þebin Karahisar), and Ourfa (Urfa); and on the Black Sea coast, in and around Trebizond (Trabzon), all of which are not part of a war zone. Only Erzeroum, Bitlis, and Van in the east were in the war zone.
Representatives of the British, French, Russian, German, and Austrian governments—namely all the major Powers, condemned the Armenian Genocide at the time. The first three were foes of the Ottoman Empire, the latter two, allies of the Ottoman Empire. The United States, neutral towards the Ottoman Empire, also condemned the Armenian Genocide and was the chief spokesman in behalf of the Armenians.
The American people, via local Protestant missionaries, did the most to save the wretched remnants of the death marches, the orphaned children.
Despite Turkish denial, there is no doubt about the Armenian Genocide. For example, German ambassador Count von Wolff-Metternich, Turkey's ally in World War I, wrote his government in 1916 saying: "The Committee [of Union and Progress] demands the annihilation of the last remnants of the Armenians and the [Ottoman] government must bow to its demands."
German consuls stationed in Turkey, including Vice Consul Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richner of Erzerum [Erzurum] who was Adolf Hitler's chief political advisor in the 1920s, were eyewitnesses. Hitler said to his generals on the eve of sending his Death's Heads units into Poland, "Go, kill without mercy . . . who today remembers the annihilation of the Armenians."
Henry Morgenthau Sr., the neutral American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, sent a cable to the U.S. State Department in 1915:
"Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses [sic] it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion."
Morgenthau's successor as Ambassador to Turkey, Abram Elkus, cabled the U.S. State Department in 1916 that the Young Turks were continuing an “ . . . unchecked policy of extermination through starvation, exhaustion, and brutality of treatment hardly surpassed even in Turkish history."
Only one Turkish government that of Damad Ferit Pasha has ever recognized the Armenian genocide. In fact, that Turkish government held war crimes trials and condemned to death the major leaders responsible.
The Turkish court concluded that the leaders of the Young Turk government were guilty of murder. "This fact has been proven and verified." It maintained that the genocidal scheme was carried out with as much secrecy as possible. That a public facade was maintained of "relocating" the Armenians. That they carried out the killing by a secret network. That the decision to eradicate the Armenians was not a hasty decision, but "the result of extensive and profound deliberations."
Ismail Enver Pasha, Ahmed Cemal Pasha, Mehmed Talât Bey, and a host of others were convicted by the Turkish court and condemned to death for "the extermination and destruction of the Armenians."
The Permanent People's Tribunal recognized the Armenian Genocide on April 16, 1984.
The European Parliament voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide on June 18, 1987.
President Bush issued a news release in 1990 calling on all Americans to join with Armenians on April 24 in commemorating "the more than a million Armenian people who were victims."
President Clinton issued a news release on April 24, 1994, to commemorate the "tragedy" that befell the Armenians in 1915.
The Russian Duma (the lower house of the bicameral Russian legislature) voted on April 20, 1994, to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
Israel officially condemned the Armenian Genocide as Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin proclaimed on the floor of the Knesset (the Israeli legislature), on April 27, 1994, in answer to the claims of the Turkish Ambassador, that "It was not war. It was most certainly massacre and genocide, something the world must remember."
The Armenian genocide is similar to the history of the Holocaust in many respects. Both people adhere to an ancient religion. Both were religious minorities of their respective states. Both have a history of persecution. Both have new democracies. Enemies surround both. Both are talented and creative minorities who have been persecuted out of envy and obscurantism.
THE ISLANDS OF IMVROS AND TENEDOS
The Greek islands of Imvros and Tenedos were ceded to Turkey by the Treaty of Lauzanne (1923). These islands had been liberated from Ottoman control in 1912 by the Greek Navy. Under Article 14 of the Lausanne treaty, Turkey assumed the legal responsibility of ruling these islands with a special self-governing status, which was to be exercised by local authorities. Under these provisions order would be kept by a police force recruited from the local Greek population that would also have the responsibility of overseeing the Greek educational system.
Turkey followed here its usual tactic of never abiding by its international obligations. Numbers speak for themselves. In 1920 the islands of Imvros and Tenedos had a population of approximately 10,000 Greeks. Today only a few hundred Greeks remain. In order to accomplish this drastic result, the Turks took a number of measures:
They expropriated the best properties, without compensation, in order to deprive the residents of their means of survival.
Greeks who traveled abroad were not allowed to return and their property was confiscated.
They forbade the teaching of the Greek language.
Imvros was converted into a prison without walls for convicted Turkish felons who terrorized the Greek residents.
Using such dreadful measures, the Turks managed to bring decay to the way of life of the Greek inhabitants and they thought that they would enjoy the fruits of their crimes in perpetuity.
THE KURDISH DRAMA
Kurdistan is today partitioned among its four neighbors.
Turkey alone occupies half Kurdistan. The Turkish Kurdistan covers an area of 230.000 km2, represents 30% of the whole area of Turkey and is inhabited by approximately 12 million Kurds.
The remaining area of Kurdistan is occupied by Iraq, Iran and a small part by Syria.
In Iran, the Kurds have sufficient freedom and a relative autonomy. In Iraq, they have also autonomy, with their own parliament in Erbil, in north Iraq.
The only country which, not only does not recognize any human right to the Kurds, but also forbids them to speak their own language, to sing their songs, to have newspapers, books, schools, culture, is Turkey. For this reason, the Kurdish problem is mostly a problem, for the part of Kurdistan, which is enslaved to Turkey
The Kurds are a Indo-European people, related to the Persians. They inhabited the lands where they live today, 35 centuries ago. Their language is related to the Persian language and was written since the 7th century B.C. According to the latest scientific research, they are considered descendants of the Medes. Thus, they have absolutely no relation (racial, linguistic, anthropologic) to their Turkish oppressors, who are of Mongolic descent. They also have no relation with the Arabs who are of Semitic descent. The only common characteristic among these three nations is the Moslem religion.
The Kurds enter history from the time of their acceptance of Islam after the occupation of their country by the army of Chalifa Omar in 637A. D. Saladin, the heroic opponent of the Crusaders, is the great hero of the Kurds during the middle Ages. Saladin formed a great empire, which survived even after his death, in 1193.
The Mongolian attacks of the beginning of the l3th century dissolved the Kurdish states. Because of the separation into many autonomous states and the feudal organization of society, a great part of Kurdistan was later conquered by the Ottoman Empire and the rest was conquered by Persia.
There is hardly any parallel in history, to the struggles of the Kurds for their independence. In 1806 Babazade Abdul Rahman organized the first revolt against the Turks in Mosul. Since then, there have been 38 Kurdish revolts and uprisings.
The greatest was that which took place in 1925,led by Sheikh Said. It lasted almost 20 months. The totalitarian regime of Kemal crushed the Kurds and drowned their revolt in blood.
The Kurds were slaughtered or hanged by thousands. The Turkish newspaper VAKIT, wrote characteristically in 7-5-1925 <<Wherever a Turkish bayonet appears, there is no Kurdish problem>>. This is always the Turkish response to peoples demanding their independence. The Kurdish revolts in Turkey had 1.500.000 victims. There is constantly for 50 years martial law in the eastern Turkish provinces, where the Kurds live, and the district is forbidden to foreigners.
The Turkish authorities want to ignore the Kurds, they call them mountainous Turks and they deprive them of any human right. Blood, violence, oppression, have not erased the desire of the Kurdish people to live independent not under this totalitarian enslavement where they are today.
The Turkish military regime has recently intensified the oppression and extermination of Kurds. Thousands of them rot in prisons while others live in caves. It would however be wrong to believe that violence against the Kurds was less intense under the so-called democratic regime of Turkey. Policy is one and the same for any Turkish regime: The policy of extermination of every minority.
The Treaty of Sevres, which has not been officially annulled, mentions an autonomous, independent Kurdistan. The Kurds have the right to free themselves from Turkish yoke. Kurdish independence must become a reality. Give your help to that end.
In the pages that follow you will see photographs of the drama and the struggle of the Kurdish people.
THE NIGHT OF TERROR IN CONSTANTINOPLE
Under the terms of the agreement regarding the exchange of populations in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek population of Constantinople-a thriving community-and the Muslim community residing in Western Thrace were exempted from the exchange process.
In the beginning of the 20th century there were 300,000 Greeks residing in Constantinople.
They had managed to survive there despite centuries of oppression and persecution under the Ottoman yoke. But the Turks were determined to expel all Greeks from their ancient home using all available means. Thus, the Turks systematically used the following measures in order to accomplish their objective:
a) In May 1941, large numbers of young men ranging in age from 18-38. Were conscripted into the Turkish army from the Greek and Armenian communities The Turkish intention was to exterminate these young men through the well-known method of <<forced-labor battalions>>. If this extermination plan was not successful it was due to protests from the Western allies and the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad in December 1942. Seeing the tides of war shifting, the Turkish authorities permitted the discharge of these soldiers.
b) On 11 November 1942, the Turkish government passed a law regarding taxation of property of non-Muslims, known as the VA RLIK VE RGISI. Through this! Non-Muslim citizens had to submit, without the right to appeal, to the discretion and arbitrary judgment of the tax clerks. The tax clerks, in turn, were instructed to appraise property at amounts many times over the actual value of each property. Then, if the individual concerned was unable to make payments of the enormous tax share (quota), the property was seized and the unfortunate owners were exiled to ACKALE, in Anatolia.
As a result (of the use) of these harsh and inhuman measures, by 1955 only 25,000 people were left, rather than the 450,000 that should have been their number given a normal rate of growth in 35 years.
On the night of the 6th September 1955, and using the Cyprus situation as a pretext, the Turks dealt the coupdegrace to the remaining inhabitants. The whole story of this pogrom is as follows:
On Saturday the 3rd of September 1955, the wife of the Turkish Consul in Thessaloniki asked for, and received, from a photographer in Thessaloniki supposedly for a keepsake a series of photographs and films of the Turkish Consulate and the neighboring home where Kemal Ataturk was born. The very next day she and her family left for Turkey.
At ten past midnight on the 6th of September 1955, in the garden of the Consulate, between the two buildings, dynamite exploded resulting in broken windows in both buildings. The Greek authorities rushed immediately to the scene. They established that two more explosive devices had been positioned in the Consulate yard and that within the building there was only one Turkish guard. In the investigation that followed it was determined that the explosives were placed there by the guard and his accomplice, a Turkish student at the Law School of the University of Thessaloniki, Oktai Egin Faik, who had brought the dynamite from Turkey a few days earlier.
On the 6th of September, Turkish newspapers using forged versions of the photos of the Turkish consul's wife and even before the explosion took place in Greece, depicted Kemal's birthplace as totally destroyed. By the evening, newspapers all over Turkey knew of the alleged destruction of Kemal's home setting off waves of anger among the Turkish populace.
The Turkish authorities then transported large groups of people in trains and military vehicles from Anatolia to Constantinople.
The attack by the angry mobs began at 5: 50 P.M on the 6th of September 1955 and ended at 02: 00 A.M on the 7th of September 1955. The police calmly assisted and even guided the mobs, in their relentless path of destruction.
At 00: 20 A.M on the 7th of September 1955 martial law was finally declared, at 02: 00 A.M curfew began and at 02: 30 A.M the authorities had restored a semblance of order.
Screaming slogans <<Today your property, tomorrow your lives>> the mobs had perpetrated terrible crimes. Those who guided them knew that by terrorizing the last Greek residents of Constantinople they would compel them to desert their homeland, once and for all. Simultaneously by destroying monuments, which were proof of the glorious Greek past of Constantinople, they would eradicate even future reminders of the Greek presence.
The results of the vandalisms were:
The Theological School of Halki, the Marasleios School, The Monestary of Valoukli, the Zappeio School for Girls and many other sites, suffered great damage.
Of the 83 Greek Orthodox churches in the <<Polis>> 59 were burned and most others suffered serious damage to the icons and ancient paintings of great value.
The tombs of Patriarchs were destroyed, Christian cemeteries and ossuaries were defiled;
3,000 homes were looted and destroyed;
4348 Greek stores were looted and destroyed;
200 Greek women were raped;
Hundreds of Greeks were ill-treated or tortured, such as the old Bishop of Derkon Iakovos; the metropolitan of Ilioupolis Yennadios, whose beard was cut off and who was then dragged through the streets so that he would die shortly thereafter from ill-treatment; and Bishop Pamphilou Yennadios that was thrown into the burned ruins of Valoukli;
15 Greeks were murdered and among them a 90 year old monk at the Valoukli Monastery, Chrys. Mantas, who was burned alive. Many others in the monastery were seriously wounded.
After the pogrom a great portion of the Greek population left Constantinople to save their lives.
On the 20th of September, 1975, in a special 35 page Survey section of the influential English magazine, The Economist, it was written: <<Turkish charges that the Moslem population in Western Thrace is harried by the Greek authorities are gross exaggerations. In 1923 there were 300,000 Greeks living in Constantinople and 110,000 Turks living in Thrace. Today, there are 15,000 Greeks living in Istanbul and 120,000 Turks in Thrace. The Greeks ask, with some justification, which country has been putting the pressure on which minority>>. (Survey-15).
It is important for us to realize that today, 1982; only 4,000 Greeks still remain in Constantinople.
In the pages to follow you will find irrefutable photographic evidence of a typical sample of Turkish cruelty, which managed to destroy the Hellenic population of Constantinople.
THE PERSECUTIONS OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES
Of Nestorians and Syrian orthodox of South East Turkey.
A-NESTORIANS. This race lives in the Hakkari province near the border of Turkey with Iran and Iraq. They are considered descendants of ancient Assyrians. They are Christian monophysites (Nestorians). In the years 1915-1918 they allied with the Armenians and placed their hopes of independence on the Russians. In 1918 the Nestorian patriarch was murdered. In order to avoid persecutions and massacres by the Turks, many Nestorians fled to Iraq. In 1920, the Nestorians were organized and armed by the British to form the so-called Assyrian troops, who tried to re-conquer their motherland, but failed.
In 1932, the British mandate of Iraq came to an end. The Nestorian community had difficulties with the Iraqi government and was forced to flee Iraq and go to Syria, Lebanon (where they live near the city of ZALEH) Cyprus and the United States. At present, a small number of Nestorians live in S.E. Turkey, where they have almost no human rights at all. B-SYRIAN-ORTHODOX. In S.E. Turkey, north of the Syrian Turkish border, in the region of the towns of Mardin and Midyat lived many centuries ago, thousands of people belonging to the Semitic race, speaking ancient Syrian (Aramaic) which was spoken in Palestine on the time when Christ was born, members of the monophysite church of the Jacobites (from the bishop Jacob Baradai). These people claim to descend from Asour and Aram, children of Sim, and that their ascendants belonged to the early Christians. These are the geographic, political, ethnological and religious characteristics of the so-called Syrian-orthodox.
After undergoing the Byzantine, Arab, and Latin rule (of the Crusaders) and a period of semi independence, the Syrian-orthodox were under the Ottoman Empire, in the l6th century. Because of religious difference, they had self-government with their own laws, courts of justice, and political (clerical) authority.
After the Ottoman Empire was dissolved, they were not assigned to Syria, as should have been the case, since, being of Semitic origin, they are related to the Arab-Syrians. Instead, they remained within the Turkish border. After Ataturk's westernization and his attempt to turn the state into a Turkish state, their self-government was abolished and persecutions began.
Some years ago, they had been fiercely persecuted because Turkish hatred, which in 1915 slaughtered the Armenians, did not always make distinction between the Christians of Anatolia. Thus, because of this <<mistake>> tens of thousands of Syrian Orthodox were slaughtered at the same time with the Armenians, as an extension of the Armenian genocide.
Today in Mardin-Midyat, live approximately 30.000 Syrian Orthodox, though 20 years ago; there lived 100.000 and 70 years ago, 200.000.
Until 1978, there were 50 churches and 10 monasteries, most of which have ancient gospels in manuscript.
The most important of these is the Mar Gabriel, where is the seat of a bishop, and where the ancient Syrian language is taught, and the ancient art of manuscript is practiced. In the Mar Yakoub monastery there is an imposing church if the 5th century and around it churches of the 3rd and 4th centuries, carved in the rock. The Deir UI Zafaran monastery once had 100 monks and was the seat of the Syrian-orthodox patriarch, who in 1954 was established in Damascus. In this monastery was taught the ancient Syrian language. In 1978, the Turkish ministry of education decreed this teaching illegal and sent away the teachers in order to obtain the Turcification of this minority.
At present, especially since 1974, there are continuously organized suppressions of the Syrian-Orthodox minority. These suppressions are manifested with deliberate actions, such as attacks, kidnappings, murders burglaries, destruction of vineyards, and crops, thefts, forced weddings accompanied by forced acceptance of Islam. All these persecutions have forced many Syrian-Orthodox to emigrate. These persecutions are known and approved b the Turkish authorities in violation of the articles 37-45 of the Treaty of Lausanne, which stipulate the protection of minorities and the non-distinction among Turkish civilians, concerning their civil rights.
More distinctly, the provisions of the articles a) 38 § 1, b) 38 § 2, c) 39 § 3, d) 40 and e) 42 § 5 of the Treaty of Lausanne, stipulate that the Turkish government undertakes the obligation to provide respectively:
Total protection of life and freedom,
The possibility to exercise in freedom any faith, or dogma
Equal civilian rights to every Turkish citizen irrespectively of difference of religion
Equal rights for the installation of philanthropic, social institutions and schools for education and
Protection of churches, synagogues cemeteries and other religious institutions of the minorities.
None of all these stipulations and obligations that Turkey has undertaken under the Treaty of Lausanne has been respected by any Turkish government (democratic or fascist) of any political color. The minorities in Turkey have no human rights.
A very interesting research conducted by a Committee of the World Council of Churches (Avenue d Anderghem 23, Bruxelles) in 1979 reveals that the Turkish government is keeping no obligation. The guarantor Powers of the Treaty of Lausanne. i.e. Britain France, Italy and Japan, are thus obliged, according to article 44 § 2, to attract the attention to these violations that take place and to ask the Turkish government to change its attitude, and respect human rights and its signature on the Treaty. Otherwise, if the Treaty of Lausanne is abolished, the Treaty of Sevres must be applied.
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YeReVaN - Contributor
- Posts: 416
- Joined: Mon May 23, 2005 2:05 am
by YeReVaN » Thu May 26, 2005 12:52 am
Turkish Distortions and Denial
Crimes against humanity, genocides in specific, have scarred our world for centuries. Governments, organizations, universities, libraries, historians, and courts have made efforts to bring to justice those who commit these crimes. In most cases the governments who commit crimes of genocide have been punished, however some have not. Throughout history, over 5,000,000 innocent human beings have fallen victim to the Turkish Ottoman Empire's campaigns of genocide. Between 1900 and 1923 over 1,500,000 Armenians were victims of these human rights violations. Since those years, the Republic of Turkey has not spared any means to deny the Armenian Genocide and its record of human rights violations.
The Republic of Turkey has directly funded the distortion of its own history by funding the efforts needed to create Turkish studies departments in some of the most prestigious American University campuses (such as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Michigan, Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, and the University of Chicago). The Republic of Turkey has directly funded lobbyists (sums over $1,000,000 per lobbyist) to enter the halls of the United States congress to lobby against Armenian Genocide recognition. And now business and economy is being used to fund these lobbyists, to create Armenian Genocide denial organizations, and to sway the public's opinion about the record of human rights violations that the Turkish government has constructed through the centuries.
With Over $3,000,000,000 exported to the United States in 2000, with an average tax rate of 20%, and with the Republic of Turkey using that revenue to further fund its lobbyists, we, as Americans, become contributors to Genocide Denial campaigns on behalf of the Turkish Government.
Crimes against humanity, genocides in specific, have scarred our world for centuries. Governments, organizations, universities, libraries, historians, and courts have made efforts to bring to justice those who commit these crimes. In most cases the governments who commit crimes of genocide have been punished, however some have not. Throughout history, over 5,000,000 innocent human beings have fallen victim to the Turkish Ottoman Empire's campaigns of genocide. Between 1900 and 1923 over 1,500,000 Armenians were victims of these human rights violations. Since those years, the Republic of Turkey has not spared any means to deny the Armenian Genocide and its record of human rights violations.
The Republic of Turkey has directly funded the distortion of its own history by funding the efforts needed to create Turkish studies departments in some of the most prestigious American University campuses (such as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Michigan, Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, and the University of Chicago). The Republic of Turkey has directly funded lobbyists (sums over $1,000,000 per lobbyist) to enter the halls of the United States congress to lobby against Armenian Genocide recognition. And now business and economy is being used to fund these lobbyists, to create Armenian Genocide denial organizations, and to sway the public's opinion about the record of human rights violations that the Turkish government has constructed through the centuries.
With Over $3,000,000,000 exported to the United States in 2000, with an average tax rate of 20%, and with the Republic of Turkey using that revenue to further fund its lobbyists, we, as Americans, become contributors to Genocide Denial campaigns on behalf of the Turkish Government.
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YeReVaN - Contributor
- Posts: 416
- Joined: Mon May 23, 2005 2:05 am
by aoxk61 » Thu May 26, 2005 1:37 am
the fact that there are turkish cypriots here makes me wanna spu out more racist words. i know what your fathers did to armenians in cyprus 30 or 40 years ago, threatening to beat children up on the streets playing football and god knows what else.
answer a few questions:
why is it that when the eurovision song contest was hosted in turkey in 2004, there was dozens of hundreds of year old Armenian Churches being shown in the footage before each song? They were left there to fall to pieces. All the churches were scattered across acres of land.
Do you like using Armenian history to call it your own or something?
Well it looks like you have already been doing that with food for instance. "turkish pizza", hahahahaha.
Why did hitler say "who now remembers the armenians" in one of his speeches in 1939? Oh and then he just goes and commits genocide against jews out of coincedence? Everyone knows that he saw how the turks got away with murdering armenians, so he did the same thing to the people he hated too.
Why is that there are about 10 million armenians scattered across the world and only 4 million in armenia itself? Did everyone just decide to leave for a holiday and then decide to stay where they were? Why is it that lebanon, cyprus, iran and nearby middle eastern have huge numbers of armenian people living there? BECAUSE THEY HAD TO ESCAPE THE TURKS FROM MURDERING THEM, THATS WHY !! and now those armenians from the middle east have gone off to places like the UK and the US.
we all know what turks are like in general, always on the news having done something bad, whether its murdering english football fans in turkey, invading another country, genocide against people and much more probably.
and last of all. President Bush promised in 2000 that he would recognize the armenian genocide, and he has broken that promise by not doing what he said. So why did he say he would recognize it, if he isnt going to do it anyway? Politics my friends, im sure you all know that.
President Bush says: I dont wanna upset my turkish counterpart, he sucks my dick every now and again, they have such a great culture, worthy of EU entry. I need their land for my military bases so i can stick my nose into the middle east as i have no other good friends in the middle east. so i can't upset my turkish friend, otherwise, well ....... we all know what would happen.
try and reply to ALL of those questions and comments if you can, turks.
answer a few questions:
why is it that when the eurovision song contest was hosted in turkey in 2004, there was dozens of hundreds of year old Armenian Churches being shown in the footage before each song? They were left there to fall to pieces. All the churches were scattered across acres of land.
Do you like using Armenian history to call it your own or something?
Well it looks like you have already been doing that with food for instance. "turkish pizza", hahahahaha.
Why did hitler say "who now remembers the armenians" in one of his speeches in 1939? Oh and then he just goes and commits genocide against jews out of coincedence? Everyone knows that he saw how the turks got away with murdering armenians, so he did the same thing to the people he hated too.
Why is that there are about 10 million armenians scattered across the world and only 4 million in armenia itself? Did everyone just decide to leave for a holiday and then decide to stay where they were? Why is it that lebanon, cyprus, iran and nearby middle eastern have huge numbers of armenian people living there? BECAUSE THEY HAD TO ESCAPE THE TURKS FROM MURDERING THEM, THATS WHY !! and now those armenians from the middle east have gone off to places like the UK and the US.
we all know what turks are like in general, always on the news having done something bad, whether its murdering english football fans in turkey, invading another country, genocide against people and much more probably.
and last of all. President Bush promised in 2000 that he would recognize the armenian genocide, and he has broken that promise by not doing what he said. So why did he say he would recognize it, if he isnt going to do it anyway? Politics my friends, im sure you all know that.
President Bush says: I dont wanna upset my turkish counterpart, he sucks my dick every now and again, they have such a great culture, worthy of EU entry. I need their land for my military bases so i can stick my nose into the middle east as i have no other good friends in the middle east. so i can't upset my turkish friend, otherwise, well ....... we all know what would happen.
try and reply to ALL of those questions and comments if you can, turks.
- aoxk61
- New Member
- Posts: 18
- Joined: Thu May 26, 2005 1:18 am
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