Balkan Turks

[Gavur]

"Freedom or Death!"

Wed Mar 22, 2006
"Freedom or Death!"
No, we aren't talking here about Iraq. Rather, for those of you who can spare some time to consider an earlier disastrous Western intervention of sorts, I present the sixth in Balkanalysis.com's ten-part series on Western meddling in Macedonia, which went down some 100 years ago. However, despite the amount of time that has passed, the ramifications of this long-gone intervention are still being felt today.

Wednesday's installment, entitled "The Bloody Road from Krusevo to Mürzsteg," marks the beginning of the "good stuff." From here on out to the end of the month, we examine in detail the structural flaws and tactical failures that caused the Mürzsteg Reform Programme- an operation eerily reminiscent of today's UN presence in neighboring Kosovo- to fail, amidst an increasingly bloody backdrop of civil insurrection and brutal state clampdowns.

Here's the intro:

"...In the energized manifesto he delivered following the creation of the first republic in the history of the Balkans, at Krusevo, revolutionary President Nikola Karev declared:

‘Freedom or Death’ is written on our foreheads and on our blood-stained banner. We have already raised that banner and there is no way back.'

It was a grim prediction. On August 2, 1903, what would become known as the Ilinden uprising began. The Turks had prepared 150,000 troops in the Macedonian vilayets, arranged in 175 battalions, in anticipation of the rebellion. Parts of the Strandzha Mountains in Bulgaria and several Macedonian villages and towns were taken by the rebels, who euphorically proclaimed a republic in the most important one, Krusevo, on August 3. Yet it was to end more like the massacre at Crete’s Arkadi Monastery in 1866 than as some triumphant liberation.

After only 10 days the Turkish forces retook the town, killing over 100 civilians. In a show of unprecedented savagery, they burned 366 houses and 203 stores, with over 700 houses pillaged and looted, according to Nadine Lange-Akhund’s The Macedonian Question. Christian women were violated, and their fingers and ears were cut off to retrieve the jewelry. In the aftermath of the revolt, the hills and valleys of Macedonia were bathed in blood. 201 Macedonian villages were burned down by the Turkish forces, 12,400 houses were pillaged, 4,694 people were killed, 70,835 people were left without shelter, and 30,000 refugees fled to Bulgaria. Villagers fleeing to the mountains starved on a diet of grass, and disease took a heavy toll also. The Macedonian fighters had achieved no freedom, but a lot of death."

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2695

[ScythianVizier]

"In 1878 when Bulgaria won its freedom after the Ottoman-Russian war, the situation for the Turks changed completely. Turkish scholars claim that this war changed the population balance in favor of the Bulgarians, while around one million Turks were uprooted from their homes and some 350,000 were killed or died of hunger and epidemics (Carnegie Endowment, 1914). “The Turkish minority in Bulgaria was formed according to the classical patterns where, as a result of the disintegration of a multi-national empire and the drawing of new state borders, a nationality until recently dominant in political life proves isolated from its principal ethnic mass and is forced into a rudimentary existence in an alien environment” (Stoyanov, 1994:268).

During and after the Balkan wars and the First World War, Muslim emigration picked up (Eminov, 1997:48). According to a Bulgarian estimate, approximately 350,000 left between 1880 and 1911. Between the World Wars, some 150,000-200,000 Turks emigrated, mainly on the basis of the Turkish-Bulgarian agreement of 1925 (Hoepken, 1997:55)"

"In 1926 the Turan Union which was a pro-Kemalist nationalist organization uniting all Turkish cultural, sports and educational societies, and which developed a political activity, was founded in Bulgaria. In 1930s and 40s, some local Bulgarian “patriotic” organizations (e.g. Rodna Zashtita) started maltreating the Turkish minority, the Turks were forced to speak Bulgarian and their religious practices were restricted. The situation became even worse after the Military Coup (May 19, 1934) when Turkish political parties and organizations were banned, while schools and periodicals reduced in number. All this was accompanied by a mass anti-Bulgarian campaign in Turkey which there were even appeals for military intervention. The period 1936-1937 saw the signing of an agreement between the two governments for the long-term limited emigration of 10,000 Turks annually (Stoyanov, 1994:270-271)."


"The consolidation of power by the Communist party in Bulgaria did not bring considerable changes in the policy towards the ethnic Turks. There was pressure on religion, but on the other hand, education and modernization were encouraged. Moreover, there was same amount of atheist pressure from the secular Bulgarian government on all the religious communities in the country (Hoepken, 1997:64). Although freedom of conscience and religion was an integral part of the Dimitrov Constitution adopted in 1947, the new government made a conscious effort to undermine the religious practices of both Muslims and Christians in Bulgaria (Eminov, 1997:51-52). This policy had a limited success. For example, even in the early 1950s, after a massive campaign for Communist Party membership among the Turks of Bulgaria, which made up just five per cent of the Party members (Hoepken, 1997:66). The oppressive applications of this time resulted in the sudden emigration of 155,000 Turks to Turkey in the summer of 1950 and 1951. Bulgarian state supported this emigration as the idea was that these emigrants could also export the communist ideology into Turkey and sending this many people into Turkey could punish Turkey for its participation in the Korean war. (Petkova, 2002)"

"Todor Zhivkov made a public speech on the National Television on May 29, 1989. In his speech, he asked Turkey to open up its borders to every Bulgarian Muslim willing to emigrate. This speech provoked a real emigration euphoria in the compact Turkish areas of Bulgaria, which resulted in the fact that in the summer of 1989 half of the work force in Bulgarian agriculture was lost due to the unprecedented “Big Excursion.” In the period May-August, 369,839 people left for Turkey. Some 320,000 of them managed to cross the border. By the end of the year, 154,937 people (42 per cent of the total number of emigrants) returned to Bulgaria as they were disappointed by the reception on the Turkish side, while 214,902 stayed in Turkey (Stoyanov, 1998:204-214)."

http://www.ingilish.com/turksofbulgaria.htm

[ScythianVizier]

Did the EU or any other Western State mention or tackle the events that took place in Bulgaria before and after 1915? Bulgaria will be a new EU member next year together with Romania. Did they require any sorts of conciliation for the Bulgarian past?

Bulgaria in fact is just an example of what happened before and after 1915. Similar events took place between 1780s and 1920s in Romania, Serbia, Crimea, Caucasus, Greece, Bosnia, Ukraine, Macedonia, and Moldova.

Do those "Highly Civilized Western Nations" spare any recognition or sympathy for the ordeal of millions of muslim people? Unfortunately, I havent yet encountered such "Western Approach", neither for any of the colonial genocides, nor for the barbaric plundering that kept on going for centuries all across this planet.

[TurQ]

I think EU should first require its own members to face their past.
A few weeks ago the French prime minister I believe visited a country in carabians. Even in that country they did horrible massacres. And apart from massacres French systematically committed cultural genocide in those countries, native languages vanished, native religons vanished and more.
EU first start with France and then go on clean one by one. Actually they have to face today the fact of ultranationalism in their countries, and how it is tolerated.

EU have toface the citizenship process in Germany, you know how shamefull questions they ask to those people? ANy reactions? I heard NONE. Holland and other countries are following this example(Excluding UK). Who is mentioning all of thse?

Did the EU or any other Western State mention or tackle the events that took place in Bulgaria before and after 1915? Bulgaria will be a new EU member next year together with Romania. Did they require any sorts of conciliation for the Bulgarian past?

Bulgaria in fact is just an example of what happened before and after 1915. Similar events took place between 1780s and 1920s in Romania, Serbia, Crimea, Caucasus, Greece, Bosnia, Ukraine, Macedonia, and Moldova.

Do those "Highly Civilized Western Nations" spare any recognition or sympathy for the ordeal of millions of muslim people? Unfortunately, I havent yet encountered such "Western Approach", neither for any of the colonial genocides, nor for the barbaric plundering that kept on going for centuries all across this planet.

[ScythianVizier]

I think EU should first require its own members to face their past.
A few weeks ago the French prime minister I believe visited a country in carabians. Even in that country they did horrible massacres. And apart from massacres French systematically committed cultural genocide in those countries, native languages vanished, native religons vanished and more.
EU first start with France and then go on clean one by one. Actually they have to face today the fact of ultranationalism in their countries, and how it is tolerated.

EU have toface the citizenship process in Germany, you know how shamefull questions they ask to those people? ANy reactions? I heard NONE. Holland and other countries are following this example(Excluding UK). Who is mentioning all of thse?

I agree. In fact, Chirac explains his grief every year for the Armenian losses, however he fails to express his grief for the Algerians, and the other nations who suffered from European (and the French one in his case) the era of "Colonial Plunders and Mass Murders" that lasted for centuries.

[TurQ]

You are right Vezir.
The French used to cut the legs of those who oppose them in the city squares to give lesson to people of Algeria so that they shouldnt have seek for freedom.
Yet they still claim that they brought civilization to Algeria and they should have stayed there.

I agree. In fact, Chirac explains his grief every year for the Armenian losses, however he fails to express his grief for the Algerians, and the other nations who suffered from European (and the French one in his case) the era of "Colonial Plunders and Mass Murders" that lasted for centuries.

[Gavur]

Armenia's Tears- interview with Vahakn Dadrian May 2, 2005

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 2, 2005

April 24, 2005 marked the 90th "anniversary" of the Armenian genocide. With the purpose of decapitating the Armenian community, on April 24, 1915, Turkish Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat ordered the arrest of all Armenian political and community leaders suspected of opposing the Ittihad (“Young Turk”) government, or favoring Armenian nationalism. In Istanbul alone, 2,345 seized leaders were incarcerated, and most were subsequently executed. None were nationalists, political or charged with sabotage, espionage, or any other crime. None were even tried.
1 According to Turkish author Taner Akcam, systematic plunder, raids, and murders of Armenians were already occurring daily, under the pretexts of “searching for arms, of collecting war levies, or tracking down deserters...”

2 Within a month, the final, definitive mass deportations of the Armenian genocide would begin.
3
In recognition of that anniversary, I interviewed Vahakn Dadrian, the world's preeminent scholar of the Armenian genocide. The author of Warrant for Genocide and The History of the Armenian Genocide in March and April alone received two lifetime achievement awards—from the Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, and from the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Dadrian studied mathematics, history and international law at the Universities of Berlin, Vienna and Zürich before earning his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He has been a Research Fellow at Harvard University, a guest professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting professor at Duke University, received two large National Science Foundation grants and for years headed a genocide study project for the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation. From 1970 to 1991, he taught sociology at the State University of New York. In 1998, he received the Khorenatsi Medal, Armenia's highest cultural award. He currently heads Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute.

*

Q. I'd like to know about your recent lifetime achievement award.



A. Which one there are many.



Q. The recent one.



A. The work by the specialists of the Holocaust [in Los Angeles] was a lifetime achievement in the area of the general genocide studies and the Armenian genocide in particular. Five years ago, the same assembly of Holocaust scholars had invited me to deliver a keynote address on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Holocaust conference, along with the Nobel prize laureate, Eli Wiesel and distinguished Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer. When I finished my recent delivery to the holocaust scholars, I got a standing ovation. Several people were unhappy that I couldn't speak longer. One female graduate student came to me, it is very funny, it never happened, and said at her table, they were betting that I was reading rather than speaking and she asked me to verify. I said, no, I never read, I always speak, I never read from notes.



Q. Does Yehuda Bauer recognize the Armenian genocide.



A. Bauer is one of the few holocaust scholars who does recognize the Armenian genocide, and tells everybody that whatever he knows about the subject comes from Dadrian.



Q. Well it's true, you have written an encyclopedia. What are the most important sources for your study, because I noticed in the background, you try not to use British, French, Russian sources.



A. You are so prepared. It is a pity this is for Internet.



Q. Most readers are not familiar with the historical background, so could you briefly review the Abdul Hamit era, and the triumvirate of the Young Turks or the Ittihad, in other words, the origin of the genocide.



A. The Armenian genocide was the culmination of a decades long process of persecution of the Armenians in the Ottoman empire. That persecution was punctuated in the last two decades of the 19th century during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamit, the so-called Red Sultan.



Q. Red for blood?



A. Yes. In the period of 1894-1896, some quarter of a million Armenians fell victim, directly and indirectly, victim to a series of atrocious massacres, and what is significant about these pogroms was that there was no retribution against the perpetrators. In other words, impunity became the hallmark of the history of the Armenian persecution and it is the dominant feature of the tragedy of the Armenian people. We have yet to appreciate the incredible ramifications of the problem of impunity in international conflicts. In the most recent three volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, I have a separate article analyzing this problem in order to emphasize [its] immense destructive potential.



Q. Well was the Armenia genocide the first time this happened.



A. No, I will explain what happened. The subsequent 1909 Adana massacres was a byproduct, in my judgment, of this phenomenon of impunity, even though it was carried out by a successor regime, namely the Young Turk, Ittihad triumvirate, [Constantinople military governor Ahmed Djemal Pasha, war minister Enver Pasha and interior minister Mehmed Talaat] and I maintain that the world war and the Armenian genocide is the culmination of the consequences of impunity accruing to the perpetrators of the massacres of the previous decades.



Q. Please elaborate.



A. As I see it, impunity is intimately linked to the problem of vulnerability that has been the curse of minorities, such as the Armenians and the Jews. I believe that impunity lies at the heart of the vulnerability of the potential victims. If you examine the two most prominent vulnerable minorities in modern history, that is the Armenians and Jews, you will see that the vulnerability was of dual character. First internally, which is associated with the status of minority. Minority status implies a number of disabilities that make them vulnerable. But equally and perhaps more importantly, both victim groups were vulnerable also externally, that is, they did not have a parent state to protect them. So I therefore maintain that genocide is intimately linked with the problem of vulnerability of the victim population.



Q. One thing I did before I came was to look at some maps, and Salonika is Greece, but it was part of the Ottoman empire. Can you talk about the changes of the map from 1910 to



A. There was very little change, because, geographically, the Armenian population remained constant within the confines of the Ottoman empire. In other words, there was a heavy concentration of the Armenian population in the 6 eastern provinces of the empire. It was historically and geographically Armenia, but it was never politically a separate Armenian state. Ottoman Armenians were a subject population. There was one minor change in boundaries. That was at the end of the 1877-78 Russo Turkish war, when Russia occupied the provinces of Kars and Ardahan, and therefore presently, Armenian territorial claims have relevance only with respect to those two provinces that they have considered part of Southeast Russia since 1877-78. So therefore the Armenians claim that it was reoccupied illegally by the Ottomans at the end of World War I, even though it was Ottoman territory before the 1877-78 war that Ottoman Turks had lost to the Russians.



Q. But Greece was part of the Ottoman empire, Syria was part of the Ottoman empire, all these countries that are now separate, were part of the empire. It was huge.



A. It was a huge empire, and the tragedy of the Armenian genocide is intimately linked to the massive shrinking of that empire.



Q. Explain.



A. Beginning with the end of the Russo Turkish war, one by one, the Christian nationalities of the Balkan peninsula emancipated themselves from the yoke of the Ottoman empire, and that process of emancipation reached its acme in the 1912 first Balkan war. It was in the fall of 1912 that the Ottoman Turks were literally expelled from Europe with grave consequences involving demography, human misery, destitution, frustration and anger against Christianity. I believe that this cumulative hatred against Christians very significantly played out in the World War I genocide, because many of the organizers and the perpetrators of the genocide were destitute refugees of the first Balkan war. All their cumulative hatred against non-Muslims and Christians was transferred into anti-Armenian savagery. We call this in social psychology displaced aggression. And even some Turkish historians recognize that in this sense the Armenians were the unfortunate targets, the scapegoats.



Q. Talk about it please.



A. The Bulgarians and Greeks were the main driving force in pushing the Ottomans out of the Balkans. This problem has not been sufficiently appreciated. Namely, the instrumental role of refugees of the first Balkan war in the Armenian genocide. For example, interior minister Talaat appointed 5,000 of them exclusively as gendarmes, and the gendarmes were the main escort personnel of the deportee convoys. Thousands of them were escorts.



Q. The Kurds, the Circassians.



A. The Kurds played a role in the utmost eastern provinces, particularly in Van and Bitlis. So in the Van and Bitlis segments, the Kurdish tribes were the principal instrument of the genocide. To illustrate the point, Mush city and Mush plain is the heart of historic Armenia. The golden age of Armenian civilization in the 5th century, Christianity, monasteries, the discovery of the Armenian alphabet, were all concentrated in that Mush plain. Mush city had about 15,000 Armenians and Mush plain is about 90 miles in length and had about 100,000 Armenian population. The overwhelming majority of this Armenian population experienced the most gruesome form of genocide, namely being herded into stables and burned alive. A veritable holocaust. So this is the real holocaust, burning alive, and this was done by the area's Kurdish tribes.



Q. A lot of the methodologies were later used in the Nazi period. Burning and drowning.



A. There was some of this in the Jewish holocaust, but in the Armenian genocide, it was massive. It was the main instrument but also in Harput, and Mush were massive episodes of burning. There is a description by a Jewish eyewitness of the massive burning of Armenian orphans.



Q. I recall this from your article.



A. Of course, speaking of methods of genocide, another ghastly method that is unique to the Armenian genocide is the massive drowning operations. In particular in the Black sea coast, involving such cities as Trabzon, Samsun and Ordu, and many of the tributaries of the Euphrates River, in particular there is a spot of the Euphrates, north of Erzurum city, called the Kemach Gorge, where nearly 20,000 to 25,000 were mutilated and thrown into the river. And Ambassador Morgenthau says in his memoirs that at that spot in the river, the corpses were so massive that the river changed course for about 100 meters.



Q. Clearly there is a dispute about the statistics. What are your estimates and how do you source that.



A. I am glad that you used the word estimates, because given the primitive conditions of the empire and the statistics, there are no definite and reliable statistics. They are all estimates. I estimate that the number of dead as a result of the deportations and massacres [during the World War I genocide] was 1.2 million and an additional several hundred thousand succumbed subsequently to their deprivations and hardships. Included in that category are also tens of thousands of forcible conversions to Islam of children and women, orphans and harem victims. And I rely mostly on German estimates, and this is more acceptable because, unlike the British and the French, Germany was the military ally of the Ottoman empire.



Q. Does that include the massacres of 1894 to 1896?



A. No. My estimates for the victims of the Abdul Hamit era massacres, direct and indirect, is some 200,000 because large numbers of Armenians succumbed to the wounds inflicted in the massacres. There is one more thing. During the same massacres, in the aftermath of them, many Armenians died of famine. Indeed, because of the cataclysmic events of the massacres, tens of thousands of other Armenians succumbed to famine, starvation.

[Krokodil]

Did the EU or any other Western State mention or tackle the events that took place in Bulgaria before and after 1915?

Yeah they really should tackle the Bulgarian massacres of 1876.

Bulgaria in fact is just an example of what happened before and after 1915. Similar events took place between 1780s and 1920s in Romania, Serbia, Crimea, Caucasus, Greece, Bosnia, Ukraine, Macedonia, and Moldova.

All these people were shedding themselves from the centuries long insurmountable opression they've had to endure.

Do those "Highly Civilized Western Nations" spare any recognition or sympathy for the ordeal of millions of muslim people? Unfortunately, I havent yet encountered such "Western Approach", neither for any of the colonial genocides, nor for the barbaric plundering that kept on going for centuries all across this planet.

I don't find any sencerity in their "recongnitions" of the Armenian Genocide. I know its just politics barring the two South American nations Argentina, and Uruguay. I don't really mind though.

Oh, and what is this turk stuff of "feel sorry for the Balkan turks"? You were the invaders, the opressors. The turks in Bulgaria didn't live in peace and harmony with Bulgarians, the turks in bulgaria were the opressors and extortionists.

GLADSTONE AND THE BULGARIAN ATROCITIES (Chapter from

http://www.hri.org/docs/Horton/hb-2.html

Selected quotes from the link:

“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Blmhashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in an European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to the ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world.”

“Let me endeavor, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by force as opposed to government by law.—Yet a government by force can not be maintained without the aid of an intellectual element.— Hence there grew up, what has been rare in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in the midst of cruelty, tyranny and rapine. Much of Christian life was contemptuously left alone and a race of Greeks was attracted to Constantinople which has all along made up, in some degree, the deficiencies of Turkish Islam in the element of mind!”


“The barbarian power, which has been for centuries seated in the very heart of the Old World, which has in its brute clutch the most famous countries of classical and religious antiquity and many of the most fruitful and beautiful regions of the earth; and, which, having no history itself, is heir to the historical names of Constantinople and Nicaea, Nicomedia and Caesarea, Jerusalem and Damascus, Nineva and Babylon, Mecca and Bagdad, Antioch and Alexandria, ignorantly holding in its possession one half of the history of the whole world.”

[Bulgarian]

Yes your right Krokodil. The Turks need to apologize for their centuries long oppression and massacres of the Bulgarians.

I love this quote Krokodil "Let me endeavor, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race."

because it is not natural what the Turks have done. Not for all these centuries and not to all different people. It must be something to do with their race.

[Gondorian]

I just skimmed through this, and I noticed a few complaints against the EU I would like to address.

1. The German Citizenship test if perfectly alright with the questions it asks now. Muslims around the world have cultural practices like Honor Killings, and I think it is perfectly reasonable for Germany to simply reject people who would kill their sister for having sex.

2. The context of expulsion of Turks from Greece was a Population Exchange where Greeks got expelled from Turkey. Turkey and Greece had both feered that the minority population would be slaughtered by angry mobs, so did the population exchange.

3. Western Countries have recognized past crimes and teach them in their history books. Turkey does not recognize it's past.