I think this article should be sent to all the members of the Canadian Parliament and the members of the United States Congress, the members of the French and Swiss Parliaments as well.
----- Original Message -----From: Ozgu OzmanSent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 11:26 AMSubject: [theactioncommittee] Fwd: An Article About "Self Defence is not Genocide" by Michael van der Galien
ozguozman <ozguozman@yahoo.com > wrote:
--- In TorontoTurk@yahoogroups. , "Sympatico"com wrote:
Self-Defence is not Genocide
http://poligazette.
com/2008/04/07/the-armenian- question- answered
Michael van der Galien on April 7, 2008
As for genocide claims, the truth is slowly coming out. As Turks now
turn
their attention to the global political arena and their image abroad,
people
will learn and know that Turks will never concede that defending
one's land
from foreign invasion is genocide.
If anyone is to blame or should apologize for what happened to Ottoman
Armenians, it is England, France, Russia and the U.S. They encouraged,
supported and armed Ottoman Armenian militants, and then abandoned
them when
it became clear Armenian militias could not defeat Turkish Nationalist
forces who were defending their lands, and fighting for their lives,
their
independence and freedom from occupation.
The background:
The Ottoman Empire had always been a multi-ethnic and multi-religious
regime. When Ottomans conquered lands during their expansionist phase
through the 1600s, they left the indigenous people to continue on
with their
own culture, language, religion and left them answerable and subject
to the
rule of their own religious leaders in communal affairs. The Ottomans
added
a layer of "federal" rule on top of that. Rather than imposing the
adoption
of an "Ottoman Muslim" identity, they left the ethnic, social and
cultural
identities of people intact. In the end, this practice, which had
allowed
the Empire to flourish as the most tolerant multi-ethnic and multi-
religious
Empire of its time, became its Achilles heel of vulnerability.
The Demise of the Empire—First, Divide the People
Starting in the 1800s European powers, influenced by the French
revolution,
began to exploit ethnic identity in the Ottoman Empire to divide its
people
and bring down its rule.
This occurred first in the Balkans where Ottoman Greeks, Bulgarians,
Romanians and others began revolting against the Ottoman regime with
the
support of England, France and Russia. The Ottoman Empire lost almost
all of
its Balkan territories due to those ethnic and religious based
nationalist
movements.
Before the various Balkan nationalist movements began, millions of
Ottoman
Muslims lived in those lands. However, during those nationalist
movements
Ottoman Muslims were ethnically cleansed from the Balkans to form
ethnically
homogeneous nations unified by religion. Thus, Slavic people
(Bulgarian,
Romanian, Serb, Croat) and Greeks who had converted to Islam for
whatever
reason during the past 300 years were forced to flee or were
massacred. One
demographer's research revealed that Anatolia absorbed over 7 million
such
refugees from 1820-1923. That is why the people of Turkey today are
comprised of a broad mosaic of ethnicities and today the
label "Turkish",
like the label "American", refers to a nationality, not an ethnicity.
After the Ottomans lost the Balkans, the next ethnic group Europe and
Russia
chose to exploit for the same purpose were Ottoman Armenians. Europe
and
Russia began helping Ottoman Armenians to organize the same type of
nationalist movement against the Ottoman regime in earnest in the
1890s. The
Armenian movement came to a head during WWI. Having already relived
the same
experience in the Balkans, during WWI, the Ottoman regime sought to
move
Armenians away from the Russian front where Armenian revolutionaries
were
effectively impeding Ottoman military efforts to defend southeastern
Ottoman
territory from Russian invasion.
First World War and the Armenian Relocations
While the Ottoman regime could have engaged in all-out war against
their
Armenian population, they did not. They instead chose to relocate
them to
another part of the Empire. There were two reasons for this.
First, Armenian revolutionaries were fighting a guerrilla war and
thus,
hiding among the civilian population so that Ottoman military forces
could
not effectively distinguish between who was a militant and who was not
because not all Ottoman Armenians had joined "the cause." Second,
Armenian
revolutionaries were committing massacres among the civilian Ottoman
Muslim
and Jewish population, which caused those civilians to retaliate
against
Ottoman Armenians in their midst. Armenian revolutionaries were also
killing
Ottoman Armenians who refused to assist Armenian revolutionaries.
Thus began
a continuous cycle of "vigilante justice" in which it was mostly the
innocent— Muslim, Jewish and Armenian— who suffered. The Ottoman
regime also
wanted to end this cycle of civilian massacres. The least restrictive
national security measure available then was to relocate Ottoman
Armenians
in eastern Anatolia until WWI ended, which is what they did.
The conditions under which the relocations were undertaken were
difficult.
The Entente Powers had blockaded the Ottoman Empire and WWI had
disrupted
all agriculture. There were widespread famines throughout the Empire.
Everyone, including Ottoman soldiers, was subject to starvation.
There were
also widespread epidemics of typhoid and other fatal diseases, which
caused
death indiscriminately among Ottomans of every ethnicity and religion.
In addition, during the relocations, the Ottoman military was engaged
on
multiple fronts, defending its borders at Gallipolis, in the Holy
Lands and
the East. The WWI front effectively encircled the entire Empire.
Thus, there
were few military and security forces available to protect caravans of
relocating Armenians from attacks by tribal Kurds, with whom Ottoman
Armenians in southeast Anatolia had a troubled history. Security
forces that
did not defend or allowed such raids to occur were prosecuted by the
Ottoman
regime, but during WWI, the Ottoman regime's ability to maintain law
and
order to protect its citizens, regardless of ethnicity or religion,
was
greatly diminished.
It is under these circumstances that Ottoman Armenians, Muslims and
Jews in
southeastern Anatolia died in large numbers. No one has yet provided
an
accurate count of all the Ottoman Muslim and Jewish dead due to mass
migrations and massacres resulting from Russian invasions into
southeastern
Anatolia supported by Armenian militants during WWI. Nor has anyone
counted
the number of dead Ottoman Muslims and Jews due to starvation and
raging
epidemics. Nor is the number of Ottoman Armenian dead certain, as
evidenced
by the continually changing numbers put forth since WWI by the
Armenian
Diaspora without regard to cause of death. Initially, it was 600,000
dead,
then 800,000, next 1 million, and now it ranges from 1.5 to 2 million.
So why then has the Armenian genocide questions raged for as long as
it has?
For a number of reasons.
Forged Documents
As noted above, Anatolia was occupied after WWI.
When the British took control of Istanbul, they were eager to
discredit the
Ottoman regime and support their efforts to justify division of
Ottoman
lands as spoils of war. The British thus offered rewards for evidence
of war
crimes against the Ottoman regime.
In response, a burgeoning trade in forged documents developed and a
false
history began to be written. The most notorious of these forgeries
are the
"Andonian" documents or "Talaat Pasha Telegrams." Andonian, an
Armenian,
produced what he claimed were telegrams in which Talaat Pasha, one of
the
three military officers running the Ottoman Empire during WWI,
ordered the
extermination of the entire Ottoman Armenian population. Although
they are
proven forgeries, the Armenian Diaspora still relies on these
documents and
promotes them as proof of their claims.
False Quotes
There are also false quotes attributed to Hitler and Atatürk that
Armenians
insist are proof of a genocide during WWI. Although even Armenian
historians
have proved the Atatürk and Hitler quotes false, the Armenian Diaspora
continues to rely upon these quotes.
Silence
Silence from the Turks and the government of Turkey has also allowed
genocide claims to flourish at will.
As Turkish nationalist forces expelled foreign armies from Anatolia,
Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk tasked members of the Turkish nationalist forces,
including
Halide Edip, with documenting atrocities foreign forces occupying
Anatolia
committed by interviewing survivors. In her memoirs, The Turkish
Ordeal,
Edip reveals that among the atrocities committed were incidents of
massacres, intentional destruction of all agricultural efforts and
infrastructure, and mass rape of local women by invading militias.
Edip notes in her book, that as she interviewed peasants to document
atrocities, survivors told her they did not care to revisit the past,
but
wanted instead to tell their new leaders what they needed to rebuild
their
lives. They needed seed to plant, equipment to farm and to rebuild
their
homes before winter snows. They saw no benefit in her assigned task of
revisiting and reliving recent horrors. They wanted to move forward
and
reclaim their lives, not live in the past and languish in misery.
Rebuilding the Future
There is another reason Turks did not want to remain buried in the
past that
no one discusses. Mass rapes have a predictable end result: children.
Many
of the women who suffered the unimaginable atrocity of mass rape
later gave
birth to children that they and their villages raised without
revealing the
truth about how they were conceived. To dwell on such atrocities
would not
remove the trauma or result in the conviction of the perpetrators. It
would
only stain and stigmatize the women and their children—victims
victimized
again. Just as there is silence today concerning the mass rapes and
the
children born of that heinous crime during the break up of the former
Yugoslavia, the people of Anatolia chose to pursue their future,
rather than
vengeance for the past.
In light of the spurious genocide claims against Turkey, which seem
to be
all the rage today, was that the right thing to do? Without a doubt,
yes.
After the foreign occupying forces had their way with her, Anatolia
was
almost uniformly left in ruins. The Nationalists that formed the
Republic of
Turkey were left to build a country and society from scratch, which
they
did. Only 85 years later, the Republic of Turkey today is an
applicant for
EU membership, is participating in all sectors of the global economy
and
flourishing. In contrast, Armenia, which has chosen to pursue
vengeance for
a history of its own distortion, has not done as well. The innate
desire of
Anatolians to focus on the future and their resilience enabled them to
successfully raise the modern, independent and free Republic of
Turkey out
of the ruins of a fallen empire.
It is clear that the citizens of the Republic of Turkey chose the most
productive path for themselves and, most importantly, for the welfare
of
their children.
REFERENCES
Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, The Great Speech (Atatürk Research Center
2005).
Hratch Dasnabedian, History of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation:
Dashnaktsutiun 1890-1924 (Grafiche Editoriali Ambrosiane/Milan 1990).
Halide Edib, The Turkish Ordeal: Being the Further Memoirs of Halide
Edib
(The Century Co. 1928).
Hovhannes Katchaznouni, Dashnagtzoutium Has Nothing to do Anymore: The
Manifesto of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, First Prime Minister of the
Independent
Armenian Republic (Armenian Information Services 1955).
Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830-1914: Demographic and Social
Characteristics (Univ. of Wisconsin Press 1985).
Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed
Genocide
(University of Utah Press 1995).
Heath W. Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians",
Political Communication and Persuasion, New York, III/2 (1985), pp.
111-140.
Andrew Mango, Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey
(Overlook Press 1999).
Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman
Muslims,
1821-1922 (Darwin Press 1995).
Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement (University of
California Press 1963).
Garegin Pasdermadjian, Why Armenia Should be Free: Armenia's Role in
the
Present War (Hairenik Publishing Co. 1918).
Stanford J. Shaw & Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and
Modern
Turkey, Volume II: Reform, Revolution and Republic; The Rise of Modern
Turkey 1808-1975 (Cambridge University Press 1977).
Salahi Ramsdam Sonyel, The Ottoman Armenians: Victims of Great Power
Diplomacy (K. Rustem & Brother 1987).
James H. Tashjian, "On a 'Statement' Condemning the Armenian Genocide
of
1915-18 Attributed in Error to Mustafa Kemal, Later 'The Atatürk'",
Armenian
Review, Vol. 35 (3), 1982, pp. 227-244.
Yalcin Suer
--- End forwarded message ---
__._,_.___
Sema Karaoglu, Founder Meltem Birkegren, Director
www.DofA.org
www.wearetheturks.org
Daughters of Atatürk is proud to promote Turkish Heritage across the globe. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk shaped the legacy we proudly inherited.
His integrity and dynamism and vision constantly inspires us. We are thankful to him for walking the untrodden path, achieving the unimaginable dream, living the eternal vision. We are the Turks, we are the future of Turkey.
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