Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Armenian Genocide

[egeli]

To Ataturk, the state came before everything else. The Ottoman Empire was torn by insurrection in every corner, under the Treaty of Serves there was nothing left for the Turks. The only way Ataturk could create a functional and secure Turkish state is by crushing all rebellions. From this perspective, Ataturk did not want to punish those responsible for the Armenian extermination because it would have divided the very Turkish nation he was trying to create.

Those who committed the genocide believed that there was something inherently wrong with the Armenian race, culture, and religion. None of this really mattered to Ataturk, as long as you were loyal to his ideology and state, it didn't really matter if you were Armenian, Greek, Muslim, Jewish, Alevi, Laz, etc...

As for Armenians being forced to Turkify, I can see how this could have happend in some cases, but the fact is that many Armenians were enthusiatic Kemalists.

Its a pity that modern day Kemalism has abandoned the Armenian people. Today, Turkish-Armenians are forced to vote for an Islamist party (AKP) for any hopes in gaining civil-rights ....

[salutetrk]

Joseph, I fully read the paper writen by Perry Anderson from the link you gave in this forum and found it a balaced academic research paper. Here is a quote from this paper
"To interested foreigners, Kemal would deplore, usually off the record, the killings as the work of a tiny handful of scoundrels. To its domestic audience, the regime went out of its way to honour the perpetrators, dead or alive. "

What is the bassis of your conclusion that Ataturk felt is was necessary?

[Steph]

Joseph, I fully read the paper writen by Perry Anderson from the link you gave in this forum and found it a balaced academic research paper. Here is a quote from this paper
"To interested foreigners, Kemal would deplore, usually off the record, the killings as the work of a tiny handful of scoundrels. To its domestic audience, the regime went out of its way to honour the perpetrators, dead or alive. "

What is the bassis of your conclusion that Ataturk felt is was necessary?

salutetrk, I agree with Joseph that Ataturk felt the Genocide was necessary because, bear with me here, the local muslim populations benefited greatly from the "bounty" found in Armenian homes and hearths.
The ottomans and young turks had for years demonised Armenians and other Christians to facillitate their plans for a Kafir-free Anatolia. If Ataturk had tried to reverse this trend, at the very point where he was fighting for his political and personal survival, he would have failed and probably been handed over to the turkish authorities in Istanbul.
Ataturk was a soldier but also a very astute politician, enough said then, to paraphrase the current debates in the U.S., he would probably put lipstick on a pig and not call it a pig.

[egeli]

salutetrk, I agree with Joseph that Ataturk felt the Genocide was necessary because, bear with me here, the local muslim populations benefited greatly from the "bounty" found in Armenian homes and hearths.
The ottomans and young turks had for years demonised Armenians and other Christians to facillitate their plans for a Kafir-free Anatolia. If Ataturk had tried to reverse this trend, at the very point where he was fighting for his political and personal survival, he would have failed and probably been handed over to the turkish authorities in Istanbul.
Ataturk was a soldier but also a very astute politician, enough said then, to paraphrase the current debates in the U.S., he would probably put lipstick on a pig and not call it a pig.

Very true. Ataturk had absolutly nothing against Armenians, and gladly accepted the allegiance of many Istanbul Armenians to his Kemalist cause. However, Ataturk's main goal was to create a unified Turkish nation. This could hardly happen if he turned against hiw own people on behalf of the gavur enemy.

Authotarian kemalism really hasnt changed over the years. For all its talk of secularism, Authortarian Kemalists have gladly exploited Islam for its own benefit over the course of Turkish Republican history. The Turkish Kemalist military encouraged Islam as a tool to fight against communism. They supported Kurdish Islamic Fundemenalists to fight against the PKK.

And now, the authortarian kemalists are paying the price. When will the world learn that the enemy of your enemy is NOT your friend.

[CRDA-France]

The debate is not on Mustafa Kemal. We know how his army, his administration and his ideology have behaved regarding the Armenians, the Greeks and the Kurds :

http://www.crda-france.org/fr/6histoire/par_pays/turquie5.htm

http://www.crda-france.org/fr/8environnements/0caucasie/kurdes_8kemalistes.htm

The debate is to understand how a statue dedicated to Mustafa Kemal has been erected in Rumania : why and how we have neglacted Rumania.

What I can say we have to work on the Armenian-Rumanian historical relations and make the Rumanian people and politician class informed.

Nil (Paris, France)
#848

[imported_SEVAN]

Atatürk rehabilitated al the Turkish criminal officials! They held positions of responsibility in his new government! They had been heavily charged by the courts-martial of Constantinople in 1919!

This man is glorified today in Turkey!

[Joseph]

Commentary
U.S. Document Reveals Turkey Continued
Ottoman Empire's Anti-Armenian Policies

By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

Those who want to shield today's Turkey from responsibility for the Armenian
Genocide have sought to blame the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire
rather than the Republic of Turkey which was not established until 1923.
One wonders then why Turkish officials, who have tried every trick to deny
the facts of the Armenian Genocide, have not taken the easy way out by shifting
the blame for the Genocide to the long defunct Ottoman Empire.
A frequently advanced explanation is that Turks, as a proud people, cannot
accept that their ancestors committed the heinous crime of seeking to eliminate
an entire nation. Others have argued that should the Republic of Turkey blame
the Ottomans for the Armenian Genocide, it could be held legally liable as
the successor state to the Ottoman Empire.
In recent years, however, it has become clear, particularly through the
painstaking research conducted by Turkish scholar Taner Akcam, that a key reason
why today's Turkish officials are not prepared to face their history honestly
and blame their Ottoman ancestors is that the Republic of Turkey is actually
the continuation of the Ottoman state. Indeed, many of the early leaders ofthe
Turkish Republic had been high-ranking Ottoman officials personally involved
in the implementation of the Armenian Genocide. Such an unbroken transitionin
leadership assured the continuity of the Ottomans' anti-Armenian policies.
In retrospect, it has become apparent that these genocidal policies
stretched over a half century, starting with Sultan Abdul Hamid's massacre of 300,000
Armenians in 1894-96, followed by the killings of 30,000 Armenians in Adanaby
the Young Turk regime in 1909, culminating in the Genocide of 1.5 million
Armenians in 1915-23, and the subsequent policies of forced Turkification and
deportation of tens of thousands of Armenians by the Republic of Turkey.
An important document from the U.S. archives, known until now to a handful
of scholars, was recently posted on an Armenian/Turkish website. It provides
incontestable evidence that Armenians continued to be uprooted from their native
lands and deported by the Republic of Turkey well into the 1930's for purely
racial reasons.
The document in question is a "Strictly Confidential" cable dated March 2,
1934, sent by U.S. Ambassador Robert P. Skinner from Ankara to the Secretary of
State in Washington, reporting the deportation of 600 Armenians from "the
interior of Anatolia to Istanbul."
The Ambassador wrote: "It is assumed by most of the deportees that their
expulsion from their homes in Anatolia is a part of the Government's program of
making Anatolia a pure Turkish district. They relate that the Turkish police,
in towns and villages where Armenians lived, attempted to instigate local
Moslem people to drive the Armenians away. =80¦ The Armenians were told that they had
to leave at once for Istanbul. They sold their possessions receiving for them
ruinous prices. I have been told that cattle worth several hundred liras a
head had been sold for as little as five liras a head. My informant stated that
the Armenians were permitted to sell their property in order that no one of
them could say that they were forced to abandon it. However, the sale underthese
conditions amounted to a practical abandonment."
The Ambassador further reported: "The Armenians were obliged to walk from
their villages to the railways and then they were shipped by train to Istanbul. =80¦
The real reason for the deportations is unknown=80¦. It is likely, though, that
their removal is simply one step in the government's avowed policy of making
Anatolia purely Turkish."
Top be sure, in the 1920's and 30's thousands of Armenian survivors of the
Genocide were forced out from their homes in Anatolia to other locations in
Turkey or neighboring countries. These racist policies were followed in the
1940's by Varlik Vergisi, the imposition of exorbitant wealth taxes on Armenians,
Greeks and Jews, and the 1955 Istanbul pogroms during which many Greeks and
some Armenians and Jews were killed and their properties destroyed.
This barbaric continuum of massacre, genocide and deportation highlights the
existence of a long-term stratagem implemented by successive Turkish regimes
from the 1890's to recent times in order to solve the Armenian Question with
finality.
Consequently, the Republic of Turkey is legally responsible for its own
crimes as well as those committed by its Ottoman predecessors.

[bell-the-cat]

Commentary
U.S. Document Reveals Turkey Continued
Ottoman Empire's Anti-Armenian Policies

By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

An important document from the U.S. archives, known until now to a handful
of scholars, was recently posted on an Armenian/Turkish website.

I despair of ever getting usable information from an Armenian source. What website, what document (if it is in an archive it will have a reference number) what archive, and what scholars?

[Edoman]

Good Article and I agree but I don’t think the Turkification of Anatolia by forcing Armenians to Istanbul is the only reason. They want to force all of the Armenians in one place to keep an eye on us and to keep us centralized for more effective control and future oppressions.
Our Government must ask that All Armenians in Turkey leave in masses and provide provisions and incentives for them to do so. I know it is not realistic but just a statement will cause problems for them. That will hurt Turkey in more than one way and send a message to the world that the Armenian communities’ safety is in jeopardy if they continue to stay in Turkey.
Our brothers in Turkey, as brave as they are, must understand that they are not over there protecting historical Armenian sites. It is an illusion. The Turks can take it away, level it in a heart beat and there is nothing they can do. They are slowly doing this anyway and to stand by and allow Turkey to continue hurting Armenians in these day and age and after everything that has happened is beyond my understanding. This is an outrage. I spit on their Turkishness and their racist Article 301.

Turkish humiliation will soon come and this Article 301 and their ridiculous Turkishness concept will tear the fabric of their society. What a joke they are. It won’t be long until Israel and US have no more need for them. Very soon their so called secularism will evaporate into Islamic extremism (Kiss Ataturk’s dreams goodby you Fascist Turks, we know who you are) and the world will finally realize the true colors of these Butchers.