Announcement

Collapse

Forum Rules (Everyone Must Read!!!)

1] What you CAN NOT post.

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is:
- abusive
- vulgar
- hateful
- harassing
- personal attacks
- obscene

You also may not:
- post images that are too large (max is 500*500px)
- post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or cited properly.
- post in UPPER CASE, which is considered yelling
- post messages which insult the Armenians, Armenian culture, traditions, etc
- post racist or other intentionally insensitive material that insults or attacks another culture (including Turks)

The Ankap thread is excluded from the strict rules because that place is more relaxed and you can vent and engage in light insults and humor. Notice it's not a blank ticket, but just a place to vent. If you go into the Ankap thread, you enter at your own risk of being clowned on.
What you PROBABLY SHOULD NOT post...
Do not post information that you will regret putting out in public. This site comes up on Google, is cached, and all of that, so be aware of that as you post. Do not ask the staff to go through and delete things that you regret making available on the web for all to see because we will not do it. Think before you post!


2] Use descriptive subject lines & research your post. This means use the SEARCH.

This reduces the chances of double-posting and it also makes it easier for people to see what they do/don't want to read. Using the search function will identify existing threads on the topic so we do not have multiple threads on the same topic.

3] Keep the focus.

Each forum has a focus on a certain topic. Questions outside the scope of a certain forum will either be moved to the appropriate forum, closed, or simply be deleted. Please post your topic in the most appropriate forum. Users that keep doing this will be warned, then banned.

4] Behave as you would in a public location.

This forum is no different than a public place. Behave yourself and act like a decent human being (i.e. be respectful). If you're unable to do so, you're not welcome here and will be made to leave.

5] Respect the authority of moderators/admins.

Public discussions of moderator/admin actions are not allowed on the forum. It is also prohibited to protest moderator actions in titles, avatars, and signatures. If you don't like something that a moderator did, PM or email the moderator and try your best to resolve the problem or difference in private.

6] Promotion of sites or products is not permitted.

Advertisements are not allowed in this venue. No blatant advertising or solicitations of or for business is prohibited.
This includes, but not limited to, personal resumes and links to products or
services with which the poster is affiliated, whether or not a fee is charged
for the product or service. Spamming, in which a user posts the same message repeatedly, is also prohibited.

7] We retain the right to remove any posts and/or Members for any reason, without prior notice.


- PLEASE READ -

Members are welcome to read posts and though we encourage your active participation in the forum, it is not required. If you do participate by posting, however, we expect that on the whole you contribute something to the forum. This means that the bulk of your posts should not be in "fun" threads (e.g. Ankap, Keep & Kill, This or That, etc.). Further, while occasionally it is appropriate to simply voice your agreement or approval, not all of your posts should be of this variety: "LOL Member213!" "I agree."
If it is evident that a member is simply posting for the sake of posting, they will be removed.


8] These Rules & Guidelines may be amended at any time. (last update September 17, 2009)

If you believe an individual is repeatedly breaking the rules, please report to admin/moderator.
See more
See less

Lessons of the Armenian Genocide and Western Responsibility - Then and Now

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Lessons of the Armenian Genocide and Western Responsibility - Then and Now

    Lessons of the Armenian Genocide and Western Responsibility - Then and Now

    ZNet
    February 15, 2008

    By Paul Saba

    The speed with which President Bush rushed to pressure Congress late
    last year to abandon a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide of
    1915 was hardly a surprise. Maintaining good relations with Turkey - a
    key ally in the `war on terror' - means realpolitik will trump
    historical memory every time for this administration. What was dismaying
    (if hardly surprising) was the almost equal speed with which
    Congressional Democrats capitulated to the President's pressure.

    This time, as on so many prior occasions, a focus on Turkey's
    responsibility for the genocide obscured the extent to which the
    European powers - Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia - played
    a prominent role in what happened to the Armenians during World War I. A
    recent book[1] by the British scholar Donald Bloxham sheds new light on
    their role in the Armenian tragedy and, in the process, provides
    valuable insights into the historical roots of contemporary developments
    in Iraq and Palestine.

    The Armenian Genocide

    In 1915-16, in the middle of the First World War, the Turkish government
    determined to rid itself of what it perceived to be a troublesome ethnic
    and religious minority - the 3,000 year old Armenian community. The
    process began with extensive ethnic cleansing or forced collective
    displacement followed by direct physical annihilation. In the end,
    approximately one million Armenians - half of the pre-war population -
    died. As Bloxham explains, while the Ottoman government bears criminal,
    legal responsibility for the genocide, historical and moral
    responsibility extends to the European powers as well. Why is this so?

    To begin with, the Great Powers repeatedly interfered in Ottoman
    internal affairs in a manner that profoundly disrupted the Empire,
    exacerbated its economic and political crises and intensified
    inter-ethnic and religious rivalries. The progressive decline of the
    Ottoman Empire over the course of the 19th Century made it a focus of
    acute inter-imperialist rivalry as each European power sought to take
    advantage of Ottoman difficulties to its own benefit. At the same time,
    external and internal structural stresses and the dissemination of
    Western ideas led to the growth of nationalism and independence
    movements amongst the Empire's many oppressed ethnic and religious
    minority groups, including the Armenians, thereby further destabilizing
    the Empire.

    When it suited their own geopolitical interests, the European Powers
    cynically championed the rights of these oppressed minorities; when it
    did not, their sufferings were studiously ignored. This practice created
    an increasingly more deadly dynamic - European pressure on the Ottomans
    for reforms to the benefit of minority communities raised minority hopes
    while fueling Ottoman hostility and suspicion of them and their foreign
    `benefactors.' Appeals by minority representatives - including the
    Armenians - to foreign powers for assistance in their plight convinced
    Ottoman authorities that these communities were dangerous and disloyal
    threats to the integrity of the Empire.

    The `Young Turk' revolt (directed by the Committee of Union and Progress
    (CUP)) that deposed the last Ottoman Sultan in 1908 brought to power a
    new leadership which favored an Empire reconstructed in accordance with
    late 19th century Western European norms. That is to say, the CUP was
    guided by a nationalism which was authoritarian, statist and
    ethnocentric. The Armenians, concentrated on the Empire's sensitive
    northern border with Russia and already viewed with suspicion, were
    perceived as a vital threat to this process. The outbreak of World War I
    provided the perfect opportunity for the new government to implement an
    aggressive `nation-building' agenda predicated upon ethnic homogeneity
    and national territorial integrity.

    From Ethnic Cleansing to Genocide

    CUP Armenian policy over the course of the War unfolded through a
    process of what Bloxham call `cumulative administrative radicalization.'
    What began as limited repressive measures at the regional level expanded
    into a nationwide program which ultimately culminated in an intentional
    policy of general killing and death by attrition.

    In May 1915, a decision was made at the highest CUP and government
    levels to systematically round up and deport all Armenians from Anatolia
    and Cilicia. That there was a genocidal intent behind the deportations
    can be seen in the fact that the Armenians were not being sent to places
    of possible settlement but to inhospitable desert regions. By mid-June,
    the CUP leadership resolved to use the cover of the war to finish for
    good the Empire's `internal enemies' and a policy of mass extermination
    was implemented.

    The resulting death of one million Armenians was not some `regrettable
    byproduct' of wartime social dislocation as has been repeatedly argued
    by the Turkish government and its academic apologists around the world.
    Rather it was deliberate, premeditated policy, one with far-reaching
    consequences. It was, says Bloxham, `the emblematic and central violence
    of Ottoman Turkey's transition into a modernizing nation state.'

    If, by their prior meddling in Ottoman affairs, the European Powers had
    fostered the social conditions out of which the genocide developed,
    their response (or rather should we say non-response) to the crime
    itself demonstrated that geopolitical concerns not humanitarian
    considerations would continue to dictate Western policy. While the
    massacres were occurring, Turkey's allies, particularly Germany, either
    looked the other way or sought to justify them as `military necessity.'
    The German officer in charge of the Ottoman navy, Admiral Wilhelm
    Souchon for example, wrote `it will be salvation for Turkey when it has
    done away with the last Armenian; it will be rid then of subversive
    blood-suckers.'[2]

    Turkey's adversaries - primarily Britain and France - adopted a policy
    that, as Bloxham remarks, anticipated the one that would be followed in
    World War II during the Nazi extermination of the Jews. The fate of the
    Armenians was tied to an Allied victory and everything should be
    subordinated to achieving that end. Nothing would be done to aid the
    Armenians in their immediate crisis.

    From Non-Intervention to Non-Recognition

    Unfortunately for Turkey, it had chosen the wrong side in the War. The
    aftermath of Turkish defeat was the collapse of the CUP government, the
    ascendancy of Mustafa Kemal (`Attaturk') and the birth of the Turkish
    Republic in 1923. The new regime consolidated itself under auspicious
    circumstances. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had dramatically
    transformed international relations; the West was intent on containing
    the infant Soviet Republic and Turkey's strategic location on Russia's
    southern flank offered the promise of a bulwark against the spread of
    the `communist bacillus' into Asia and the Middle East.

    As a result, the European powers and the United States resolved to come
    to terms with Kemel and his Republic. Its sovereignty and territorial
    integrity was recognized and its remaining minority communities,
    including the Armenians - now clamoring for self-determination - were
    expected to sideline their ethnic and nationalist aspirations. As a
    result, even though there was substantial continuity between the old CUP
    regime that had authorized the genocide and Kemal's government, there
    would be no war crime trials for the guilty parties. To justify these
    alliances, the unfortunate history of wartime atrocities had to be swept
    under the rug. All the European powers went along with this decision. In
    this regard, the role of the US government is singularly instructive.

    US policy toward Turkey was dictated by a combination of concerns:
    anti-Bolshevism, the need for regional and national stability and a
    desire to promote American economic interests in the Middle East.
    Turkey's rebellious minority groups were seen by the US government as a
    threat to these long-term geopolitical objectives. In the end,
    non-recognition of the genocide and acquiescence to forced assimilation
    of Turkey's remaining Armenian and Kurdish populations became US policy.
    As the US High Commissioner to Turkey from 1919 to 1927, Admiral Mark L.
    Bristol put it, he `could see greater calamities to the world than for
    the Turks to come in here and clean out of Constantinople all of these
    Levantines of different nationalities, the Greeks and Armenians, and
    start to build up again without these people.'[3]

    Current US policies toward Turkey, including the on-going refusal to
    acknowledge the Armenian genocide may be formulated in more elegant
    language, but in their indifference to the continuing plight of Turkey's
    Kurdish and Armenian populations, they are no less reprehensible.

    The Great Powers `Legitimate' Ethnic Cleansing

    Many accounts of the Armenian genocide view it primarily as a precedent
    for the Nazi extermination campaign waged against European Jewry. While
    there are significant similarities as well as clear differences between
    the two crimes, the more enduring legacy of what happened to the Ottoman
    Armenians in 1915-16 is rather the mass physical displacement they
    suffered before and after World War I and the way this ethnic cleansing
    was legitimated in the postwar peace settlements.

    In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Armenians were subject to
    numerous attempts by Turkish authorities to displace them from their
    traditional homelands. In this they were not alone - far from it. Ethnic
    cleansing had been going on in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire for
    decades. In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, for example,
    some 400,000 Muslims were made refugees, expelled from the newly
    `liberated' lands and sent to Anatolia. But these events, like the
    rounding up and deportation of the Armenians during World War I, lacked
    all sanction in international law. At the peace conferences organized by
    the victorious allies at the War's end, however, ethnic cleansing would
    become legitimate. Here state boundaries in the Middle East would be
    drawn and redrawn with scant regard for the rights or desires of
    indigenous communities and what were euphemistically called `population
    transfers' would gain international acceptance.

    Perhaps the best known of the post-World War I peace conferences is the
    one held at Versailles in 1919, where a draconian settlement was imposed
    on a defeated Germany. But for historians of the Middle East, the key
    conferences were San Remo and Lausanne. At San Remo in 1920, Britain
    received a mandate over Palestine as well as the Ottoman provinces of
    Basra, Baghdad and Mosul from which was cobbled together the new state
    of Iraq. In similar fashion, France was granted control of Syria and
    present-day Lebanon. Both arrangements were later confirmed by the
    League of Nations. At Lausanne in 1922-23, the Great Powers decided the
    appropriate boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey and, acceding to
    Turkish pressure, denied the claims of Armenians and Kurds for
    independence and their own states.

    But even more infamously, Lausanne legitimated the Turkish goal of an
    ethnically homogenous nation-state by authorizing a large scale
    `population exchange' between Turkey and Greece. According to the terms
    of the settlement, each country would forcibly expel a troublesome
    ethnic/religious minority. Thus, under appalling conditions and with a
    significant death toll on both sides, close to two million people - over
    1.25 million Greeks and a half a million Turks - were forcibly made
    refugees. Ethnic cleansing was now sanctioned by international treaty; a
    dangerous precedent had been set.

    Iraq and its Kurdish Population

    The lessons of the Armenian tragedy are of far more than mere historical
    interest. They have immediate relevance for understanding the roots of a
    number of current conflicts in the Middle East. Both the dispute
    between Israel and the Palestinians and war and internal disunity in
    Iraq reflect the continuing legacy of foreign intervention and
    state-building by imperialist dictat that has plagued this region for so
    long. Both are in large part the product of the same international
    system of Great Power interference that initially contributed to and
    later sought to deny the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.

    As noted earlier, Iraq was the artificial creation of the post-World War
    I settlement conferences which carved up portions of the former Ottoman
    Empire to the benefit of Britain and France. By imposing a Sunni
    minority upon a majority Shia population and strengthening traditional
    clientist forms of allegiance, Britain's efforts at state-making in Iraq
    under the League of Nations' mandate undermined prospects for democracy
    and contributed to the chronic instability of the new nation.

    Because Britain wanted control over the valuable oil reserves of Mosul,
    it insisted on the province's incorporation into an Arab Iraq,
    notwithstanding its large Kurdish population. Having previously
    encouraged Kurdish demands for an independent state as a bargaining
    weapon against Turkey, Britain and the other great powers now sought to
    discourage Kurdish aspirations throughout the region. This was easier
    said than done and the `Kurdish question' has bedeviled Iraqi
    governments ever since.

    The presence of a large Kurdish minority in Iraq has proven problematic
    for three reasons. First, the Kurds have consistently demanded a degree
    of autonomy if not outright independence in their traditional homelands.
    Second, the brutal efforts of successive Iraqi regimes to suppress and
    forcibly assimilate the Kurdish population have been a failure. Finally,
    the Great Powers have repeatedly used the `Kurdish problem' and
    Arab-Kurdish disputes to meddle in Iraqi internal affairs (in the same
    fashion that they had exploited Armenian suffering at Turkish hands to
    interfere in Ottoman affairs).

    The United States in particula
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

  • #2
    r has repeatedly attempted to use the
    Iraqi Kurds to further its own policies in Iraq and in the Middle East
    in general. In the early 1970s, when the US was supporting the Shah of
    Iran in his conflict with Iraq, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
    secretly channeled $16 million of military aid to the Iraqi Kurds to
    encourage an uprising. When the Shah was overthrown and an Islamic
    republic under Ayatollah Khomeini established, however, the US shifted
    its support to Iraq and now opposed the Kurdish insurgency it had
    previously fostered. In 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, the U.S. and other
    Western Powers extensively supplied Saddam Hussein's regime with
    weapons, including chemical weapons. In 1988, these weapons were used in
    gas attacks on rebellious Kurdish villages which were accused of aiding
    Iran.

    But after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 US policy toward Iraq and
    Saddam Hussein again abruptly changed. Suddenly, the plight of the Iraqi
    Kurds was `rediscovered.' Toward the end of the first Persian Gulf War,
    George Bush Sr. encouraged a revolt of the Kurds in northern Iraq. Once
    the rebellion broke out, however, the U.S. abandoned the
    insurrectionists, fearing that their success would result in a break-up
    of the Iraqi state, a result which could strengthen the hand of Iran in
    the region.

    The situation of the Iraqi Kurds today, now under American occupation,
    remains uncertain. Viewed as the community most favorable to the US
    presence, the Kurds initially enjoyed a privileged position. They were
    permitted to dictate critical terms in the new Iraqi constitution,
    afforded significant regional autonomy and, perhaps most importantly,
    promised rights to oil development there. However, as the occupation's
    need for a strong and effective central government in Iraq has become
    increasingly urgent, US policy again appears to be shifting against the
    Kurds. This change is being facilitated by strong pressure from Turkey
    which fears a strong Kurdish community in Iraq will inspire and energize
    its own Kurdish minority.

    Once again, Kurdish rights will have to take a back seat to the needs of
    Western imperialism, this time in the interests of the `war on terror.'

    The Tragedy of Palestine

    The Palestinian tragedy is a product of the same international system
    which repeatedly redrew the map of the Middle East for the benefit of
    imperialism. Twice Palestine was betrayed - first, in the peace
    conferences following World War I when it was wrested from the Ottomans
    only to be turned over to the British Empire, and then, after World War
    II, when it was partitioned over the protests of the local Arab
    population. Through partition and at the expense of the Arabs, Europe
    sought both to atone for a crime committed by Europeans against
    Europeans (European Jewry) and to further rid itself of the remnants of
    an ethnic and religious minority that it had never been able to
    successful assimilate.

    In the Palestinian case too, if artificial state-making over the
    objections of the local inhabitants was one face of imperialism, ethnic
    cleansing was the other. The forced expulsion of Palestinians from their
    land which accompanied Israel's successful military actions in the war
    of 1948 drew inspiration and a sense of covert legitimacy from the
    involuntary `population exchanges' authorized by the victors at
    Lausanne. And the continuing acquiescence of the West - including and
    most prominently the United States - to the denial of Palestinian
    self-determination and genuine nationhood is a logical continuation of
    policies that subordinate the interests of minority communities in the
    region to Great Power politics. Such is the logic of imperialism.

    Today the Israeli government, which constantly invokes the Holocaust to
    justify its own war against the Palestinians is compelled, by its close
    economic, political and military alliance with Turkey, to support the
    latter's continuing denial of the Armenian genocide. Contemporary
    political realities, so the rationale goes, must take precedence over
    historical memory. In this manner, both the Jewish and the Armenian dead
    are dishonored in the service of two regimes, each seeking to hide its
    crimes, past and present, from the light of day.

    Taking Responsibility

    For many Americans, the on-going conflicts in the Middle East, with the
    exception of our own `war on terror' in Iraq and Afghanistan, are little
    more than, in Bloxham's words, `murky interplay between barbarous
    orientals.'[4] The United States' own contribution, as one of the
    leading imperialist powers, to these conflicts and the resulting death
    and suffering it has caused is all too often unknown or denied.
    The debate in the United States over recognition of the Armenian
    genocide is likewise all too often exclusively focused on Turkey's need
    to acknowledge its past. Missing is any demand that the international
    context in which Turkish crimes was initially facilitated, then
    overlooked and finally repeatedly denied by the world's leading powers,
    including the United States, also be recognized. For international human
    rights activists, this latter demand is ultimately the more important one.


    NOTES:
    [1] Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide. Imperialism, Nationalism
    and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford University Press,
    2005).

    [2] Ibid, p. 116.

    [3] Ibid, p. 196.

    [4] Ibid., p. 25.


    Paul Saba's ZSpace Page (http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/paulsaba)

    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

    Comment

    Working...
    X