What do Armenians think of Ataturk?

[Gavur]

Hrant Dink Received Threatening Messages
19.01.2007 19:53 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “We are in deep sorrow due to the murder of Hrant Dink, editor of Agos newspaper. We strongly condemn this cruel act. Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian origin, wrote in his column on January 10th that he was receiving threatening messages,” says the press release of ARI MOVEMENT NGO received by PanARMENIAN.Net. In the words Director Rana Birden, he also wrote that he felt like a fearful dove but "knew that the people of this country would not hurt a dove".

“Unfortunately, he was wrong. We call for restraint in social reactions at this sensitive time and relate our condolences to Dink's family, his loved ones, and the staff of Agos Newspaper,” the release says.

[Joseph]

Ataturk was a great man, maybe the greatest of the 20th century.

Kurds must realize something, they should give up "my enemy's enemy is my friend" policy and leave this forum as it is...

Yeah, especially as Turkey stands ready to invade Northern Iraq just to keep the Kurds from having their own self-rule. If Kurds come here as friends, that must mean you are the enemy. So what are you doing here?

[1.5 million]

Ataturk was a great man, maybe the greatest of the 20th century..

Of course you left out the part about all civlization, all languages, all inventions having been originated by the Turks.

[spirit]

Yeah, especially as Turkey stands ready to invade Northern Iraq just to keep the Kurds from having their own self-rule. If Kurds come here as friends, that must mean you are the enemy. So what are you doing here?

Why don't you accomodate some of our Kurds, this is the best way to learn about them; but I warn you, they may claim your northern land in 80 years...

Acoording to the 1926 Istanbul Agreement, Turkey left Kerkuk to the "FREE IRAQ" in the cost of %10 of oil profit of Iraq during the following 25 years .Today Iraq is NOT free so one condition of the agreement is not satisfied , and if Iraq is divided into states, and if Kurds are to found their own state ( they must be really courageous to do this), Kurdistan is NOT the state that Turkey made Istanbul Agreement. Both ways Turkey has a right to balance the terrority, because it seems that USA's Johny's screw up .

Well, If I come to the question " what I am doing here ", I'm here because I believe that problems can be solved by interaction, by sharing thoughts and feelings...Not by just accusing...

Regards...

[Varouj]

http://www.hri.org/docs/Horton/Hort..._DESTRUCTION_OF

THE DESTRUCTION OF SMYRNA
(SEPTEMBER, 1922)



THE last act in the fearful drama of the extermination of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire was the burning of Smyrna by the troops of Mustapha Khemal. The murder of the Armenian race had been practically consummated during the years 1915-1916, and the prosperous and populous Greek colonies, with the exception of Smyrna itself, had been ferociously destroyed. The idea has been widely circulated, and seems to be gaining credence, that the Turk has changed his nature overnight.

Also, Sir Valentine Chirol, Harris Foundation lecturer at the University of Chicago in 1924, made this statement (“The Occident and the Orient”, page 58): “After the Turks had smashed the Greek armies they turned the essentially Greek city (Smyrna) into an ash heap as proof of their victory.”

The destruction of Smyrna happened, however, in 1922, and no act ever perpetrated by the Turkish race in all its bloodstained history, has been characterized by more brutal and lustful features, nor more productive of the worst forms of human sufferings inflicted on the defenseless and unarmed. It was a fittingly lurid and Satanic finale to the whole dreadful tragedy. The uncertainty which at one time existed in the public mind as to the question, “Who burned Smyrna?”, seems to be pretty well dispelled. All statements that tend to throw doubt on the matter can be traced to suspicious and interested sources. The careful and impartial historian, William Stearns Davis, to whom reference has already been made in this work, says (“A short History of the Near East”, page 393): “The Turks drove straight onward to Smyrna, which they took (September 9, 1922) and then burned.”

Men of this stamp do not make assertions without having first gone carefully into the evidence.

We have already seen by what methods the Greeks had been eliminated from the coastal region of Asia Minor. The murders and deportations have been described by which a flourishing and rapidly growing civilization had been destroyed, villages and farmhouses wrecked and vineyards uprooted. Large numbers of Greeks, however, who had managed to escape by sea, returned to their ruined homes after the landing of the Hellenic army in May of 1919, and set to work industriously to restore their ruined properties.

Mustapha Khemal now determined to make a complete and irretrievable ruin of Christianity in Asia Minor. Carthago delenda est. The plan, revealed by its execution, was to give the city up for some days to lust and carnage; to butcher the Armenians, a task which has always given a special pleasure to the Turk; to burn the town and to carry the Greek men away into captivity.

The main facts in regard to the Smyrna fire are:

1. The streets leading into the Armenian quarter were guarded by Turkish soldier sentinels and no one was permitted to enter while the massacre was going on.

2. Armed Turks, including many soldiers, entered the quarter thus guarded and went through it looting, massacring and destroying. They made a systematic and horrible “clean up,” after which they set fire to it in various places by carrying tins of petroleum or other combustibles into the houses or by saturating bundles of rags in petroleum and throwing these bundles in through the windows.

3. They planted small bombs under the paving stones in various places in the European part of the city to explode and act as a supplementary agent in the work of destruction caused by the burning petroleum which Turkish soldiers sprinkled about the streets. The petroleum spread the fire and led it through the European quarter and the bombs shook down the tottering walls. One such bomb was planted near the American Girls’ School and another near the American Consulate.

4. They set fire to the Armenian quarter on the thirteenth of September 1922. The last Greek soldiers bad passed through Smyrna on the evening of the eighth, that is to say, the Turks had been in full, complete and undisputed possession of the city for five days before the fire broke out and for much of this time they had kept the Armenian quarter cut off by military control while conducting a systematic and thorough massacre. If any Armenians were still living in the localities at the time the fires were lighted they were hiding in cellars too terrified to move, for the whole town was overrun by Turkish soldiers, especially the places where the fires were started. In general, all the Christians of the city were keeping to their houses in a state of extreme and justifiable terror for themselves and their families, for the Turks had been in possession of the city for five days, during which time they had been looting, raping and killing. It was the burning of the houses of the Christians, which drove them into the streets and caused the fearful scenes of suffering which will be described later. Of this state of affairs, I was an eye-witness.

5. The fire was lighted at the edge of the Armenian quarter at a time when a strong wind was blowing toward the Christian section and away from the Turkish. The Turkish quarter was not in any way involved in the catastrophe and during all the abominable scenes that followed and all the indescribable sufferings of the Christians, the Mohammedan quarter was lighted up and gay with dancing, singing and joyous celebration.

6. Turkish soldiers led the fire down into the well-built modern Greek and European section of Smyrna by soaking the narrow streets with petro_leum or other highly inflammable matter. They poured petroleum in front of the American Consulate with no other possible purpose than to communicate the fire to that building at a time when C. Clafun Davis, Chairman of the Disaster Relief Committee of the Red Cross, Constantinople Chapter, and others, were standing in the door. Mr. Davis went out and put his hands in the mud thus created and it smelled like petroleum and gasoline mixed. The soldiers seen by Mr. Davis and the others had started from the quay and were proceeding toward the fire.

7. Dr. Alexander Maclachlan, President of the American College, and a sergeant of American Marines were stripped, the one of his clothes and the other of a portion of his uniform, and beaten with clubs by Turkish soldiers. A squad of American Marines was fired on.

http://www.greecetravel.com/smyrna/

http://www.greece.org/genocide/smyrna1922

[Varouj]

America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915

Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal

Home > Educational Resources > Encyclopedia Entries on the Armenian Genocide

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) was the founder of the Republic of Turkey and the consummator of the Armenian Genocide. Kemal was an officer in the Turkish army whose defense of Gallipoli in 1915-1916 defeated the Allied campaign to breach the Dardanelles and quickly eliminate the Ottoman Empire from World War I. A supporter of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), he stayed out of politics until 1919 when he organized the Turkish Nationalist Movement in the drive to oust the Allies who had placed strategic portions of the country under occupation after its defeat. Kemal established headquarters in Ankara, amnestied CUP members who joined his movement, and regrouped the remaining Ottoman army and other irregular units under his general command.

Kemal first directed his forces against the French in Cilicia with fatal consequences for the Armenians. With Allied encouragement and promises of protection, most surviving Armenians had repatriated to their hometowns in Cilicia in 1919. The attack by Kemalist units against the city of Marash in January 1920, which was accompanied by large-scale slaughtering of the Armenians, spelled the beginning of the end for the remnant Armenian population. The Armenians of Hajen (Hadjin) put up a last desperate fight for seven months only to be reduced by October 1920 to less than five hundred survivors who fled from a city completely torched by the besieging Turks. When the French formally agreed to evacuate Cilicia in October 1921, the debacle signified a second deportation for the Armenians of the region. In the meantime, the Turkish Nationalist forces had gone to war against the Republic of Armenia. With secret instructions from the Ankara government to proceed with the physical elimination of Armenia, General Kiazim Karabekir seized half the territories of Armenia in November 1920 as Red Army units Sovietized the remaining areas. Once again the Armenian population was driven out at the point of the sword with heavy casualties as the city of Kars and its surrounding region were annexed by Turkey.

The final chapter of the Armenians in Anatolia was written in Smyrna (Izmir) as Kemalist forces routed the Greek army and entered the city in September 1922. Soon after, a fire begun in the Armenian neighborhood consumed the entire Christian sector of the city and drove the civilian population to the shore whence they sailed into exile bereft of all belongings. With this exodus from the mainland, Mustafa Kemal completed what Talaat and Enver had started in 1915, the eradication of the Armenian population of Anatolia and the termination of Armenian political aspirations in the Caucasus. With the expulsion of the Greeks, the Turkification and Islamification of Asia Minor was nearly complete.

With the restoration of Turkish sovereignty over Anatolia, Kemal turned his attention to the modernization of the country. Designated President of the newly proclaimed Republic of Turkey in 1923, he embarked upon a thorough-going process of Westernization while promoting a secular Turkish national identity. This effort was epitomized in the adoption of the Latin alphabet for the modern Turkish language. In 1934 the Turkish Grand National Assembly hailed Kemal with the surname of Ataturk, meaning the father of the Turks, in tribute to his singular contribution in forging modern Turkey. With an eye toward securing his legacy, in 1931 Kemal founded the Turkish Historical Society, which was charged with the guardianship of the state's official history. In 1936 Kemal began to pressure France to yield the Sanjak of Alexandretta, or Iskenderun, a district on the Mediterranean under French administrative rule whose inhabitants included 23,000 Armenians. Preoccupied with the deteriorating situation in Europe, France yielded when Turkey send in its troops in 1938. Kemal died that year having prepared the annexation of the district. His action precipitated the final exodus of Armenians from Turkey in 1939 as most opted for the French offer of evacuation to Syria and Lebanon rather than risk mistreatment yet again.

—Rouben Paul Adalian




Armenian National Institute
1140 19th Street, NW Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/kemal.html

[Varouj]

More of Winston's lamentable misunderstanding of Turkey.
If you think that a dictator of an unimportant country, from an obsolete era full of military strong-men, can be included as one of the greatest political figures of the 20th century then your misunderstandings are becoming fatal!

Ataturk's legacy in Turkey was dictatorship until the 1950s, a completely unrealistic planned-economic model based on Soviet lines that still shackles Turkey's economy, the stagnation of all political and intellectual thought until the 1990s, and the enshrining of Islamic institutions into the very heart of the Turkish state. This last legacy will be the most damaging in the long term. Rather than making Islam an obsolete concept within Turkey, Attaturk seeked to preserve it in order to make it into his ally. That was OK as long as it could be controlled and kept as a curious hobby for just the peasants. But those peasants (or rather their "kiosk Islam" urban-living descendants) are now in the majority and can blindly vote Turkey into becoming a fundamentalist Islamic state.

Correctomundo...but then we know why he says such incredibly stupid things.