Turkey's challenge to the Armenians

[Hovik]

http://www.theforgotten.org/soad/

Great clip!

[Doberman]

Do you really believe Turkey will disentegrate if it recognizes the genocide? You are not much aware of politics are you my friend? I know that Turkey will not disentegrate if it recognizes genocide claims but are you not giving naive Turks a solid basis to continue not to recognize claims by saying Turkey will come to an end? I would expect higher of you especially after your stating I am so out of touch and lacking of intellect...

Dear "friend",

in the past, when lectures were held within Turkey on the Armenian Genocide, Turkey's highest ranking security officials were there sitting in the front row. Since when, in any country, have you seen the top officials attending a historic conference, "which happened decades ago"????

This simple fact is proof of what a fragile country Turkey is. Need I remind you of the most recent events in Turkey regarding this simple conference and discussion related to history???

[Doberman]

Therefore, they have no right to expect us to retreat. That's what my point was, I guess you missed it or I wasn't clear enough.

I knew what you were saying, I was just clarifying that for our Turkish 'friend' here.

[neutral]

Turkey does have censorship issues. I think it needs to readdress them. I think the Turkish government has too much power over the Turks.

Turkey is too extreme. They banned that headscarf thingy that Muslim women wear. I think in Armenia its not against the law for Muslim women to wear headscarfs? Can anyone confirm this.

[neutral]

A note for Hellektor: if you want to think that I'm Turkish then go ahead. I'm just pondering why would I be a Turk not admitting he's a Turk?

Just because I mentioned the words Turks and Race in the same sentence I don't think that qualifys me to be a Turk. I was merely trying to establish what the race the Turks derive from. I can't find this information anywhere can can one tell me?

As far as I'm aware the Armenians are from the Indo-European family, now if I have offended any Armenians as to their racial origins I appologize in advance (please correct me).

[imported_Hellektor]

The Turkish Race

I was merely trying to establish what the race the Turks derive from. I can't find this information anywhere can can one tell me?

I'll try to keep it as concise as possible:

The original Turkic warlike tribes invaded this side of the Caspian in the 11th century AD, attacking from the steppes of Central Asia.
Racially speaking, they were the nomadic inhabitants of Central Asia, that are referred to as Ural-Altaic. They speak different dialects of a language that is referred to as Turkic.
It is common knowledge, and anyone with a high school background of history should know that they had remained in the earliest stages of human development and had missed some 10 to 12 thousand years on the process of human civilization.
As a result they were extremely cruel and it was precisely this cruelty that "helped" them "conquer" all the ancient, civilized peoples of Asia Minor and beyond.
You should consider the forced turkification of the indigenous peoples, the rape of women in their filthy harems, and the stealing and conversion of children for Janissary, the constant humiliation and mistreatment of non-Turkish (and not only) "subjects", the back-breaking taxes as high as 200%, slavery, etc. that eventually increased their numbers and decreased that of the locals.

For instance Jean Baptiste Tavernier, who traveled six times in the East in the period of 1632-1668 wrote in his notes that "the land stretching from Tokat to Tabriz is almost exclusively inhabited by Christians and this region used to be part of the Armenian Kingdom...That's why it's not surprising to come across fifty Armenians for every single Muslim".

Reis Efendi in his Risalesi, the official report for the Ottoman Ministry of Interior, prepared in 1778-1780, wrote that "the Armenians were the most numerous reaya-population in the Ottoman State". In numbers it should lie somewhere between 2.5 to 3 million, since the Greek population at the time must have been over 2 million.

As I have mentioned time and again, they probably hadn't developed the finer attributes humans had already acquired such as conscience, guilt, shame, sympathy, honesty, modesty, ability to care for others' pain, ability to value achievements of civilization such as works of art, places of worship, manuscripts, cities, etc.
The Turks are a people that have never had an alphabet. Up to that time they had never put a brick upon another, never kept written records. In other words they had stayed in the hunter-gatherer stage of human evolution.
The present day peoples of Central Asia, the Kazakhs, Tatars, Uzbeks...Kyrgyz, etc. are the real Turks or Turkic peoples.
The Turks of today i.e. the peoples of Turkey, "Azerbaijan" and the "Republic" of Northern Cyprus, etc. are mainly turkified Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Talish (a Persian people), Arabs, Kurds, Zazas, different Balkan and Slavonic peoples.

I recommend you read these excerpts from Aristakes Lastivertsi's accounts of the barbarities of these tribes, the ill day they first set hoof on Armenian territory about 9.5 centuries ago. He was there, he saw it with his own eyes.

The problem is, the Turks have not changed a bit from those times, the Hamidian genocide of 1895-96, the massacres of Armenians in Baku, Nakhijevan, Artsakh, etc. in 1905-06 and on, the AG, the barbarities commited in Sumgait, Baku, Gandzak, etc. only a decade and a half or so ago, and the savage mutilation of Gurgen Markarian in his sleep, and the subsequent glorification of the beast Ramil Safarov as a national hero by the “Azeri” government, and most of all, their stubbornness in denying the obvious truth, manifested time and again in this forum and elsewhere, sadly confirm this, not to speak of the barbaric destruction of thousands of Armenian churches and other historic monuments in all Turkish occupied lands.

The thing is, while they have almost completely lost their original outward features, their way of thinking has not changed much.
That is why I always say: You think like a Turk therefore you are a Turk.
I do not say this to offend anyone, believe it or not, it is so that the Turks of today are not a race, the whole thing has nothing to do with race. If you give up your language, your name and your religion and you speak Turkish and become a Muslim, your life is not threatened.
Many Armenians and other ethnic groups did the same thing over centuries and their life was spared. The Turks of today are their descendants, albeit illegitimately.

[imported_Hellektor]

Apology Wasted

Everyone, no name calling please. Lets focus on the Armenian genocide and recognition. We can't insult the Turkish culture and expect them to listen to what we have to say about the genocide. In order to have effective debates, we need to keep it as friendly and respectful as possible.


Thank you

Dear Tongue, I appreciate your call for civility.
I did apologize in my response to his protest:

I'm sorry that you are offended but for one moment put yourself in our place and see how you have hurt my people when it was the Armenians that built your goddamn empire and you gave us genocide in return, while you shamelessly occupied and destroyed our home.

but he keeps on denying the AG and regurgitates the same old Armenians sided with Russians so we punished them and gave 'em hell crap.

Armenians allied with Russians we were being hit. This is not a lie, we have eyewitnesses in the issue my friend's grandfather for one. I am sorry but when Russia left the fronts you face all fury of Turkish with a few armed groups. This is what war is, you do not differ innocent from guilty..

More offensive than this does not exist, considering the mountain of evidence that confirms AG.

Now let me clarify why I used the phrase "...bring Turkish snakes to this world in the middle of Europe", which was the main cause of stubborn elendil's distress.

Some years ago, I saw a program on Dutch TV about Muslims in Europe.
There was this Turkish man, who had married a Dutch woman and had children from her.
When asked what he considered himself, the 10 year old or so kid of that couple proudly cried "ik ben Turk" (I am Turk), and replying to a question about Christians he yelled: All Christians should become Muslims or be killed, or something in those lines.
Consider, a kid born in Holland from a Dutch mother, is already brainwashed and filled with hatred towards the people and country to which he partly belongs and where he's born.
I consider that kid a snake. I cite this creature, not to offend anyone, but from a saying in Persian that goes: Breeding snakes in one's sleeve; that is, feeding someone that bites the hand that feeds them.
Now, us Armenians dilute so easily in other nations. There are dozens of examples in my own family.
To show you what I mean, just know that from the six children of my maternal grandparents, three married Armenians and the rest married Europeans.
My generation counted 8 Armenian and 8 European grandchildren.
The European ones do not speak a word of Armenian.
The next generation counts 2 Armenian great grandchildren and 10 European.
In other words, the six children of my grandparents added 18 Europeans and 9 (one died) Armenians to this world. Hardly enough for the Armenian (2 only) generation to continue normally.

[neutral]

I'm not Armenian and I'm not Turkish. So I can't comment.

[Tongue]

- All the data that the Aremians present are available to anyone and everyone
- All the data that the Turks present are available to anyone and everyone
- There is no data that anyone on this forum or any other forum has that is not open for viewing to the rest of the world
- All accounts from both sides are also available

The ottoman government was very cautious when perpetrating the genocide. All the documents were destroyed on the spot. There is a great article about this in our "book reviews and articles section" by a Turkish newspaper titled "cleansing of achieves" . Please read it. No photography of the deportees or anything was allowed. All the pictures Armenians have were taken secretly and were illegal. That said, why would anyone bother studying Turkish archieves?

*Despite every shread of data that Armenians have, their insistence on the the word 'genocide'....and still no outcome to their desire! Is it possible to imagine for the average Armenian that so much suffering, anguish and heartache that their ancestors have gone through is nothing short of a tragedy, no more or less valuable than any other lost life in history BUT it was this genocide? Is it a possibilty that it was something else? Where would the Armenian cause be today if it called it something else? Would it be in a better position?

I understand what you're saying but don't agree with you. What would you call it? A tragedy? Please, massacre of 1.5 million people is far from a tragedy!!! By definition, Genocide is the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status or other particularity. Now, why should the Armenians settle for anything else? We might never get the recognition we deserve... but that doesn't stop us from wanting the truth to be heard. It was indeed a genocide, and if Turkey is afraid of compensation and would prefer Armenia use another term when referring to the genocide, it is a problem they need to deal with not us. We are not willing to hide the truth or rewrite our history even if the truth gets us nowhere...

[Tongue]

Destroying documents is an essential part of government culture. Perhaps, people from my generation can find or unearth some documents on their ancestors and therefore demonstrate that we have people other than the ones who pride themselves for destroying documents.


TANER AKÇAM

The article titled "Countless Archives Destroyed" by Ayshe Hur reminded me destruction of Armenian Genocide related documents. Systematic destruction of documents appears to be a significant part of our culture. The Sabah daily, in its November 7, 1918 issue states that documents related to Armenian Genocide, sought after by the government, could not be found, and it furthers claims that Talat Pasha and his entourage, before they left the government, quite possibly destroyed the orders related to Armenian genocide in entirety. The news article reflects the truth. Similarly, on May 1919, during proceedings of the Court Martial Hearings of the Union and Progress Party (CUP), prosecutors declare that documents belonging to both Special Organization and to the Central Committee of the Committee for Union and Progress were stolen. The military prosecutor furthermore informs the hearing that Police Chief of the period, Aziz Bey, testified that Talat Pasha, before his resignation, took several files with him from his office and never returned them (Official Gazette 3540).

Likewise, several memoirs of the era tell that, before he escaped to overseas, Talat Pasha went to a friend’s seaside estate by Arnavutkoy with a full suitcase of documents and he burned all these documents in a fireplace at the basement of the estate (Enver Pasha by Shevket Sureyya Aydemir. Volume 3, Page 468). Mithad Shukru, K. Talat and Ziya Gokalp, during the main prosecution of CUP leaders at various court sessions (most specifically at second and fifth sessions), testified that Central Committee of CUP documents were taken by Dr. Nazim (Official Gazette 3540, 3543, 3554). It was not only CUP officials who took documents personally, several German Officers also stole documents. Hans F.L. Von Seeckt, who during the war was the Ottoman Chief of Staff, took a significant portion of the Ottoman War Ministry documents with him upon his return to Germany. The chief of Cabinet, Izzet Pasha, protested the situation and demanded the return of the documents. Berlin promised to return of the documents but never fulfiled the promise. (AA Turkei, 158/21. A48179, The embassador’s telegram dated November 11, 1918).

Read, destroy

There is a significant point here that the Sabah newspaper could not be aware of it. For some documents, as they were sent to the provinces, concurrent orders were issued to burn or destroy…There happens to be an encrypted telegram left in the Ottoman Archives dated July 22, 1915 sent by the General Directorate of Police and signed by Talat Pasha. The telegram tells how to deal with the converts in the caravans of exiles and further instructs that "after the reading of the related personnel to take the telegram out of post office and destroy" (Court Martial Proceedings, encrypted 54,100). In our possession there are other documents proving that orders were sent to the provinces to burn all the documents they have. For example, in the above mentioned accusation, it is told that the regional governor of Der Zor, Ali Suat was ordered to destroy the telegram after reading it. Similarly, in another court case, at the third session of Yozgat Court Martials, the presiding judge reads the testimony of Provincial Governor Kemal, taken in front of Mazhar Investigative Commission. In his testimony, Kemal says that he had received telegrams to be burned after his read (Ikdam, February 11, 1919)

On the July 3rd, 1919 session of the court case on the Ottoman Cabinet, former Minister of Telecommunication, Huseyin Hasim, testifies that documents of the War Department were burned. Furthermore, on the 5th session of the court, he admits that orders to burn were sent to Catalca (Official Gazette 3571 and 3573). For this reason alone, a separate court case is opened for the former deputy director of Catalca Post Office Osman Nuri Efendi. The court starts on August 4, 1919. The accusation is burning documents. In his defense statement, the accuser claims to burn documents on orders. He elaborates, " My superiors, within their legitimate authority, ordered me to burn documents from a certain date to another date, therefore I burned them." The outcome of this court case is not clear (See Alemdar Newspaper, August 5 and 6, 1919).

Memoirs of Refik Halid

The burning of the documents continued after the war was lost. On Oct. 14, 1918 Izzet Pasha forms a new cabinet, where he also assumes the responsibility of War Ministry. He sends an immediate order to the Special Organization’s Head Administrator to immediately stop all activities and destroy archives (quoted by Bilge Criss based on Husamettin Erturk – Istanbul Under Allied Rule, page 147). Ahmet Esat (Esat Uras by his better known name) declares to the British officials that a meeting had been held on the destruction of Armenians and he has in his possession the handwritten minutes of it, he later tries to sell these minutes. He gets arrested and in his testimony he claims, " Right before the armistice, the government officials went to archives daily every night and destroyed most of the documents." (Foreign Office Reports 371/4172/31307, Heathcotee Smith’s 4.2.1919 dated report).

Refik Halid Karay, other than being an influential literary figure and newsman, was the general administrator of the Postal and Telegraphic Services during the armistice. He published his memoirs about this era under the name of "Minelbab Ilelmihrab/Memoirs of Armistice Era." While his memoirs were being published in a magazine named "Aydede", Sadik Durakan, who for many years served in the Post Office, wrote him a letter. Karay includes the letter in his book. Following is a short section from this letter: " I wish to tell you an incident I witnessed during the armistice. As you know, after the Mondros Armistice, the Allied forces started to enter our country from various directions and started to occupy the country piece by piece. During the occupation, in order to prevent documentation in the central post offices to fall into enemy hands, Mehmed Emin Bey sent a telegram to all Central Post Offices and asked them to destroy all official documentation, telegrams and their duplicates in totality (R.H Karay, Minelbab Ilelmihrab, pages 271-2).

Some of these telegrams are captured by the British before they reach regional offices. For example, in June 1919 a telegram from Interior Ministry to the Governor of Antep, which is intercepted by the British, orders all telegrams between 1914 and 1918 to be destroyed. The Foreign Ministry sends an official protestation letter to the British Occupational Forces, but it admits such an order was given (FO371/4174/102 551; files 108-111).

The destruction of documents was not solely performed by the government officials. Individuals also have the culture of destroying documents remained in their possession. One of the defendants of the 1926 Ankara National Liberation Court , which was assembled to judge the Izmir assassination attempt, Kor (Blind) Ali Ihsan Bey, a member of Istanbul’s CUP General Center, admits burning all the documents in his possession (1926 Ankara National Liberation Court proceedings). People, who burned documents in their possession, did not hesitate to tell their actions in their memoirs during the following years. I would like to cite two examples. An important CUP leader, Ali Munif Bey, was a provincial district head and governor who also served in the CUP cabinet as the Ministry of Public Works. Ali Munif was arrested for his involvement in the Adana massacres and later exiled to Malatya. He says the following for the documents that gave up his guilt: "In reality even though I had destroyed more important documentation, I had left this in one of the pockets of my suitcase. The document that I had forgotten to destroy was being used to incriminate me (Memoirs of Ali Munif Bey by Taha Toros, pages 96-7).

Administration Culture

The second name is Ahmet Rifat Calika. Calika’s memoirs, who also served as Attorney general during the National Liberation War, was published by his elder son, Hursit Calika. Hursit Calika mentioned of his father’s most important characteristics, "The single thing that distinguishes him from the intellectuals of the time is such that he took daily notes and later evaluated everything he witnessed. He also made sure that all documents that passed his hands were preserved for the future generations. Unfortunately, he was forced to destroy or burn most of these documents time to time. Reasons for this destruction will be explained in his next book’s introduction." The reasons mentioned are very simple. Rifay Bey too was informed in advance that Istanbul Court Martial is looking for him. In addition, he was placed under special protection by the prosecutor, the judge and the gendarmerie regiment commander who would eventually arrest him. In his memoirs Rifat Bey says the following, "One day, the prosecutor informed me of an encrypted letter received by the City Government. The letter told of a mixed committee being formed in the city of Kayseri, charged with investigations of forced exiles of Armenians. The letter further states that all suspected individuals will be investigated and prosecuted, furthermore, they were going to search the houses. We came home with my classmates, I burned all my memoirs and documents. Whatever I had saved, I was forced to destroy in February of 1934." (Memoirs of Ahmet Rifat Calika, pages 7, 15-6). The search of Kazim Karabekir’s Erenkoy Estate was the reason for his second destruction of documents.

As you can see, destroying documents is an important part of the Administration Culture. Therefore, having the comfort and security that somebody had destroyed all documents, it becomes much easier to declare "Nothing happened to Armenians, all the documents are registered and are in place." What shall I say, perhaps someone from my generation may find documents from his parents and makes them public so along with people who pride themselves for destroying we can be proud of people who pursue the truth.