Is Turkey Going Islamist?

[CatWoman]

Well, if you are really obsessive about this Turkey issue and refuse to go to cinema instead, I may give you some references for serious readings. (btw, reading not copy/past ok?)
You may start with Erik J. Zurcher, Bernard Lewis, Lord Kinross,Stefanos Yerasimos, etc.

Lord Kinross, the author of several books on the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, has described how the organisers of the massacres exploited religious sentiments:

Their tactics were based on the Sultan's principle of kindling religious fanaticism among the Moslem population. Abdul Hamid briefed agents, whom he sent to Armenians with the specific instructions as to how they should act, It became their normal routine first to assemble the Moslem population in the largest mosque in a town and then to declare, in the name of the Sultan, that the Armenians were in general revolt with the aim at striking at Islam. Their Sultan enjoined them as good Moslems to defend the faith against these infidel rebels . . . Each operation, between the bugle calls, followed a similar pattern. First into the town there came the Turkish troops, for the purpose of massacres; then came the Kurdish irregulars and tribesmen for the purpose of plunder. Finally came the holocaust, by fire and destruction, which spread, with the pursuit of fugitives and mopping-up operation throughout the lands and villages of the surrounding provinces. This murderous winter of 1895 thus saw the decimation of much of the Armenian population and the devastation of their property in some 20 districts of eastern Turkey.

[karakitap]

Lord Kinross, the author of several books on the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, has described how the organisers of the massacres exploited religious sentiments:

Their tactics were based on the Sultan's principle of kindling religious fanaticism among the Moslem population. Abdul Hamid briefed agents, whom he sent to Armenians with the specific instructions as to how they should act, It became their normal routine first to assemble the Moslem population in the largest mosque in a town and then to declare, in the name of the Sultan, that the Armenians were in general revolt with the aim at striking at Islam. Their Sultan enjoined them as good Moslems to defend the faith against these infidel rebels . . . Each operation, between the bugle calls, followed a similar pattern. First into the town there came the Turkish troops, for the purpose of massacres; then came the Kurdish irregulars and tribesmen for the purpose of plunder. Finally came the holocaust, by fire and destruction, which spread, with the pursuit of fugitives and mopping-up operation throughout the lands and villages of the surrounding provinces. This murderous winter of 1895 thus saw the decimation of much of the Armenian population and the devastation of their property in some 20 districts of eastern Turkey.

pfffff, again this genocide thing. I just give him a reference book. I am not talking about your genocide. How are your brains ready to talk about the genocide suddenly, and what kind of database do you have to give references about genocide immediately? Or is your google faster than mine?

[karakitap]

wini is cool... but copy and paste habit he has ( Yoda)

He is a good person but obsessive a bit. Well, most of the Armenians are obsessive in this forum so it is not his faulth.
BTW, this copy/paste contest is really good, I improve my English with this way. Otto, are you here for the same reason, too?

[winoman]

wini is cool... but copy and paste habit he has ( Yoda)

Considering the large amount of independent - but fully supported - analysis I have provided on the Genocide issue in this forum I take exception to being braned as someone who only copies and pastes. However - even if given that I have copy and pasted much material - it is not done willy nilly - but with an understanding of the material and relevance to the argument - totally unlike anything Carrot-Top has shown himself capable of. So regardless i know my stuff. I have access to a great library of Genocide related materials - the vast majority of which is not available on-line but it is print which I have read and studied. That I can post original compositions which ignoramouses such as Carrot-Top and other Turks believe are the work of others is testament to the degree that i know my stuff and can write. Unfortunatly Carrot-Top can only dribble spittle and whine - he apparently is unable to read and reason.

[Otto]

mr winoman the things you post here are cool and must be respected... i am just joking about those and i know karakitap is joking too ...please dont take into consideration those copy paste attacks from our side... it is karakitap way of getting on nerves and he is succesfull...

[winoman]

Well, if you are really obsessive about this Turkey issue and refuse to go to cinema instead, I may give you some references for serious readings. (btw, reading not copy/past ok?)
You may start with Erik J. Zurcher, Bernard Lewis, Lord Kinross,Stefanos Yerasimos, etc.

I have read all of these extensively with the exception of Stefanos Yerasimos whom I'm not immediatly familiar. I have read and own both Kinross's Ataturk and Ottoman Centuries BTW (likley before you were even born). Oh and BTW Zurcher is quite a critic of Turkish attempts at portrying their own history and he accuratly reports on the mass slaughter of Armenians and destruction of Ottoman Armenia and places the blame for this and for other wartime follies squarly on the CUP. Zucher also reports on the anti-CUP attitudes and expressions on the part of many Turks during and particualry after the war - whom they viewed as irresponsible scoundrels who ruined the nation (in part by killing the Christian minorites). Zucher published exerpts from a collection of reports of travelers in Turkey (and specifically of two Ottoman scholars who toured Turkey) in the 1930s and recorded the following observations:

"A town like Kayseri was full of ruins, among other things of churches, which had been shot to pieces. The town had reputedly deteriorated much since the Greek and Armenian communities, which had once made up one third of the population, had been "destroyed." The travellers hear the same story in Niğde: the town has gone down since the "slaughter" of the Armenians. When Linke visits the Black Sea towns of Samsun, İnebolu and Giresun, she is told that the economy (notably the trade in hazelnuts and tobacco) has suffered badly because of the departure of the Pontic Greeks..."

"...thirteen to fifteen years after the great fire, the old Greek and Armenian quarters of Izmir are in ruins. The debris is still being cleared."

"Kurds...are being deported. They are dressed in rags and extremely dirty ("much more so than Gypsies"). All they carry in the way of possessions is a wooden trunk, which is opened by the police in order to find a letter from the ministry giving a list of names and the route they are to take. They are "loaded and unloaded like cattle by the officials."

"they find figures dressed in rags, who, their guides tell them, are the remains of a large transport of Kurds from Tunceli. They "are simply removed there and distributed over the country. They are then dumped anywhere, without a roof over their head or employment. They do not know a single word of Turkish".

etc

[karakitap]

I have read all of these extensively with the exception of Stefanos Yerasimos whom I'm not immediatly familiar. I have read and own both Kinross's Ataturk and Ottoman Centuries BTW (likley before you were even born). Oh and BTW Zurcher is quite a critic of Turkish attempts at portrying their own history and he accuratly reports on the mass slaughter of Armenians and destruction of Ottoman Armenia and places the blame for this and for other wartime follies squarly on the CUP. Zucher also reports on the anti-CUP attitudes and expressions on the part of many Turks during and particualry after the war - whom they viewed as irresponsible scoundrels who ruined the nation (in part by killing the Christian minorites). Zucher published exerpts from a collection of reports of travelers in Turkey (and specifically of two Ottoman scholars who toured Turkey) in the 1930s and recorded the following observations:

"A town like Kayseri was full of ruins, among other things of churches, which had been shot to pieces. The town had reputedly deteriorated much since the Greek and Armenian communities, which had once made up one third of the population, had been "destroyed." The travellers hear the same story in Niğde: the town has gone down since the "slaughter" of the Armenians. When Linke visits the Black Sea towns of Samsun, İnebolu and Giresun, she is told that the economy (notably the trade in hazelnuts and tobacco) has suffered badly because of the departure of the Pontic Greeks..."

"...thirteen to fifteen years after the great fire, the old Greek and Armenian quarters of Izmir are in ruins. The debris is still being cleared."

"Kurds...are being deported. They are dressed in rags and extremely dirty ("much more so than Gypsies"). All they carry in the way of possessions is a wooden trunk, which is opened by the police in order to find a letter from the ministry giving a list of names and the route they are to take. They are "loaded and unloaded like cattle by the officials."

"they find figures dressed in rags, who, their guides tell them, are the remains of a large transport of Kurds from Tunceli. They "are simply removed there and distributed over the country. They are then dumped anywhere, without a roof over their head or employment. They do not know a single word of Turkish".

etc

I really admire your database about Turkey. BTW,seriously what is your occupation winoman?

[winoman]

More Zurcher

While obviously a Turkish apologist to a degree (as most researchers in this field are beholden to Turkey which requires loyalty pledges for access to research materials - oh yes...) - he still has much good insight that is useful - For instance:

He claims that 800,000 Turkish military died during WWI - half from famine and disease (and non attributed to Armenians BTW...). And while he only admits to 600,000-800,000 Armenian deaths (as he directly references McCarthy's figures in this regard)! its interesting how he attributes these: "Furthermore, from the spring of 1915 onwards, eastern Anatolia had become a war theatre itself. This had led to great suffering among the Muslim population which in part had followed the retreating Ottoman armies. The movement of troops stimulated the spread of epidemics, notably typhus in winter and cholera in summer. The decade of war also marked the end of the old Christian communities in Anatolia, primarily those of the Greek Orthodox and the Armenians. The Armenian community was ravaged by the large-scale persecutions organized by the Young Turks in 1915-16. Massacres, death marches and neglect combined to kill some 600 to 700.000 Armenians, which probably constituted at least forty percent of the community as a whole."

He should also have noted that one of the primary disease vectors was from the Armenian "deportees" who were left dead along numerous routes and in various places throughout Eastern and Southern Anatolia and whose unburied bodies was the primnary source of disease and death among Muslim Comminitees. Nogales attributes disease from dead and dying Armenian refugees to be responsible for nearly 1 million Muslim deaths (though it is difficult to corroborate these figures).

"...as a result of war, epidemics and starvation, some 2.5 million Anatolian Muslims had lost their lives, as well as up to 800.000 Armenians and may be 300.000 Greeks. All in all, the population of Anatolia declined by 20 percent through mortality - percentage twenty times higher than that of France, which was the hardest hit West European country in World War I. The effects of war and disease were spread unevenly, however: in some eastern provinces fully half of the population had perished and another quarter were refugees."

Again he uses McCarthy for the 2.5 million claim. A claim that is very dificult to rationalize or attribute (how many of these deaths were Arabs killed by the Turks for instance - etc) And an interesting admission though - (that Turks were not the majority of the Empire until after they disposed of the Christians):

"Apart from mortality, the Anatolian population also showed the effects of large-scale migration. All through the nineteenth en early twentieth centuries Muslims had fled, or been forced to flee, from territories, which were lost by the empire to Christian states: Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece. Eventually, these people had been resettled in Anatolia (often on former Armenian properties) and there they and their children now made up about a third of the post-war population. The loss of the predominantly Christian areas and the immigration of Muslims had meant that in 1913, for the first time in its entire history, the Ottoman Empire had a Turkish majority."

"In the aftermath of the Balkan War up to 200.000 Greeks (out of 450.000 living on the Aegean coast) had been forced to leave Western Anatolia." (this was the massacres and expulsions commited by the Special Organization in 1913/14 that I wrote about earlier...

"Anatolia in 1923 was a completely different place from what it had been in 1913. The larger Christian communities were practically gone and the population of about 13 million was now 98 per cent Muslim, as against 80 per cent before the war. Linguistically, only two large groups were left: Turks and Kurds..."

"The country was also more rural than it had been. Only some 17 per cent of the people now lived in towns of 10.000 inhabitants or over, as against 25 per cent before the war. This reflected the fact that the Christian communities had been more heavily urbanized. They had also completely dominated the modern sector of the economy: the cotton mills of the Çukurova, the silk of Bursa, the exports of figs and raisins in the West, shipping, banking, the railways, hotels and restaurants: all had been almost exclusively in the hands of Christians before the war."

Above is another interesting admission that further ties the similarities of the Armenian and Jewish experiences. The Jews were largely urban and mercantile - as were the portions of the Armenian and Greek communities who were most resented by the Turks - and for similar reasons. And in fact both Hitler and the CUP exorted the simple values of the peasentry and denigrated the urban minorities as being parasites who were not integrated into the traditional societies of Turks and Germans respectfully...

And who were Kemal's nationalsits by and large:

"The political leadership, both of the resistance movement between 1918 and 1922 and of the republic from 1923 onwards, consisted of a well-defined group of people, who shared a number of characteristics. They were, almost without exception, people who had made their careers in the service of the state, predominantly military officers.

They had played a role in the politics of the second constitutional period (1908-18) and even before that, in the preparations for the constitutional revolution. Almost without exception they were former members of the Committee of Union and Progress (Ýttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti)."

"...the continuity extends beyond the fact that Young Turk and Kemalist leaders hailed from a common pool. My thesis was and is that it was in fact the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress, which planned and prepared the national resistance struggle after 1918 and that Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his circle of adherents only gradually gained control of the movement."

Aha! - thus - acording to Zucher (and others of course) - current Republic is directly based on CUP that is responsibel for Armenian Genocide!

and:

"...therefore, the army of the republic was the army of the late empire. It was the army, and certainly also the gendarmerie, which allowed the republican regime to extend its control into every corner of the land and into every village, to a degree the empire had never achieved."

and (civil government conection as well - in addition to military and national leadership...)

"The bureaucracy by and large was the imperial bureaucracy."

Oh and back to our old friends the CUP:

"The vast majority, certainly of the Unionists, already before the 1908 revolution subscribed to a kind of Ottoman Muslim nationalism in which the dominant position of the Turks was taken for granted. "

"When the Young Turks organized the war effort through countless political, social, economic and cultural organizations which all carried the title milli (“national”) it was no longer in doubt what was meant by this term. It meant by and for the Ottoman Muslims. This tendency continued throughout the years of World War I (which was also officially declared a Jihad and which was partly fought out as a brutal ethnic/religious conflict in Anatolia) and beyond. The proclamations of the national resistance movement in Anatolia after 1918 make it abundantly clear that the movement fought for continued independence and unity of the Ottoman Muslims."

"...an immense effort at nation-building within the borders of the new republic was made, based on the idea of a “Turkish” nation. Although Turkish nationalism was territorial and based on a shared Turkish language, culture and ideal (with nationality being open to anyone willing to adopt these), a romantic idealization of the Turkish national character, with racist elements, became more and more important in the thirties.."

"In practice, the adoption of Turkish nationalism led to the forced assimilation ofthe 30 percent or so of the population which did not have Turkish as its mother tongue." (my Note: Christians totally excluded of course)

"Traces of...“Young Turk” mentality are still much in evidence in Turkey at the start of the twenty-first century."

Yeah - Zurcher has some rather interesting analysis and observation I must admit...

Quotes taken from : From empire to republic – problems of transition, continuity and change - Erik-Jan Zürcher

[karakitap]

really winoman, what is your job besides this forum?
I mean are you a scholar,etc?
this kind of concern about Turkish history, really interesting
have you been to Turkey before?

[winoman]

really winoman, what is your job besides this forum?
I mean are you a scholar,etc?
this kind of concern about Turkish history, really interesting
have you been to Turkey before?

I've been to Turkey several times. My family is from Anatolia and - of course - has a history there - as does my extended (Armenian) family - thus my interest. As for my job - why don't you ask Bell-the-cat! - all I will say is that I do many things - (scholarly type) research included - I also make films and do other things...