On Bruises, Beauties, and Makeup

[Gavur]

In Istanbul, a Crack In the Wall of Denial;

The Washington Post
September 25, 2005 Sunday
Final Edition

In Istanbul, a Crack In the Wall of Denial;
We're Trying to Debate the Armenian Issue

by Elif Shafak

ISTANBUL

I am the daughter of a Turkish diplomat -- a rather unusual character
in the male-dominated foreign service in that she was a single
mother. Her first appointment was to Spain, and we moved to Madrid in
the early 1980s. In those days, the Armenian Secret Army for the
Liberation of Armenia, known as ASALA, was staging attacks on Turkish
citizens -- and diplomats in particular -- in Rome, London, Zurich,
Brussels, Milan and Madrid; our cultural attaché in Paris was
assassinated in 1979 while walking on the Champs-Elysees. So
throughout my childhood, the word "Armenian" meant only one thing to
me: a terrorist who wanted to kill my mother.

Faced with hatred, I hated back. But that was as far as my feelings
went. It took me years to ask the simple question: Why did the
Armenians hate us?

My ignorance was not unusual. For me in those days, and for most
Turkish citizens even today, my country's history began in 1923, with
the founding of the modern Turkish state. The roots of the Armenians'
rage -- in the massacres, atrocities and deportations that decimated
Turkey's Armenian population in the last years of Ottoman rule,
particularly 1915 -- were simply not part of our common historical
memory.

But for me today, and for a growing number of my fellow Turks, that
has changed. That is why I am in Istanbul this weekend. I came to
Bosphorus University to attend the first-ever public conference in
this country on what happened to the Ottoman Armenians in and after
1915. As I write, we are fighting last-minute legal maneuvers by
hard-line opponents of open discussion to shut the conference down. I
don't know how it will turn out -- but the fact that we are here,
openly making the attempt, with at least verbal support from the
prime minister and many mainstream journalists, highlights how far
some in my country have come.

Until my early twenties, like many Turks living abroad, I was less
interested in history than in what we described as "improving
Turkey's image in the eyes of Westerners." As I began reading
extensively on political and social history, I was drawn to the
stories of minorities, of the marginalized and the silenced: women
who resisted traditional gender roles, unorthodox Sufis persecuted
for their beliefs, homosexuals in the Ottoman Empire. Gradually, I
started reading about the Ottoman Armenians -- not because I was
particularly interested in the literature but because I was young and
rebellious, and the official ideology of Turkey told me not to.

Yet it was not until I came to the United States in 2002 and started
getting involved in an Armenian-Turkish intellectuals' network that I
seriously felt the need to face the charges that, beginning in 1915,
Turks killed as many as 1.5 million Armenians and drove hundreds of
thousands more from their homes. I focused on the literature of
genocide, particularly the testimony of survivors; I watched filmed
interviews at the Zoryan Institute's Armenian archives in Toronto; I
talked to Armenian grandmothers, participated in workshops for
reconciliation and collected stories from Armenian friends who were
generous enough to entrust me with their family memories and secrets.
With each step, I realized not only that atrocities had been
committed in that terrible time but that their effect had been made
far worse by the systematic denial that followed. I came to recognize
a people's grief and to believe in the need to mourn our past
together.

I also got to know other Turks who were making a similar intellectual
journey. Obviously there is still a powerful segment of Turkish
society that completely rejects the charge that Armenians were
purposely exterminated. Some even go so far as to claim that it was
Armenians who killed Turks, and so there is nothing to apologize for.
These nationalist hardliners include many of our government
officials, bureaucrats, diplomats and newspaper columnists.

They dominate Turkey's public image -- but theirs is only one
position held by Turkish citizens, and it is not even the most common
one. The prevailing attitude of ordinary people toward the "Armenian
question" is not one of conscious denial; rather it is collective
ignorance. These Turks feel little need to question the past as long
as it does not affect their daily lives.

There is a third attitude, prevalent among Turkish youth: Whatever
happened, it was a long time ago, and we should concentrate on the
future rather than the past. "Why am I being held responsible for a
crime my grandfather committed -- that is, if he ever did it?" they
ask. They want to become friends with Armenians and push for open
trade and better relations with neighboring Armenia . . . . as long
as everybody forgets this inconvenient claim of genocide.

Finally, there is a fourth attitude: The past is not a bygone era
that we can discard but a legacy that needs to be recognized,
explored and openly discussed before Turkey can move forward. It is
plain to me that, though it often goes unnoticed in Western media,
there is a thriving movement in Turkish civil society toward this
kind of reconciliation. The 50 historians, journalists, political
scientists and activists who have gathered here in the last few days
for the planned conference on Ottoman Armenians share a common belief
in the need to face the atrocities of the past, no matter how
distressing or dangerous, in order to create a better future for
Turkey.

But it hasn't been easy, and the battle is far from over.

Over the past four years, Turks have made several attempts to address
the "Armenian question." The conference planned for this weekend
differed from earlier meetings in key respects: It was to be held in
Istanbul itself, rather than abroad; it would be organized by three
established Turkish universities rather than by progressive Armenian
and Turkish expatriates; it would be conducted completely in Turkish.


Originally scheduled for May 23, it was postponed after Cemil Cicek,
Turkey's minister of justice, made an angry speech before parliament,
accusing organizers of "stabbing their nation in the back." But over
the ensuing four months, the ruling Justice and Development Party
made it clear that Cicek's remarks reflected his views, and his
alone. The minister of foreign affairs, Abdullah Gul, announced that
he had no problem with the expression of critical opinion and even
said he would be willing to participate in the conference. (As it
happens, he has been in New York in recent days, at the United
Nations.)

Meanwhile, the Armenian question has been prominently featured in
Turkish media. Hurriyet, the nation's most popular newspaper, ran a
series of pro and con interviews on this formerly taboo subject,
called "The Armenian Dossier." The upcoming trial of acclaimed author
Orhan Pamuk, charged with "denigrating" Turkish identity for talking
about the killing of Kurds and Armenians, has been fervently debated.
Various columnists have directly apologized to the Armenians for the
sufferings caused to their people by the Turks. And stories have been
reported of orphaned Armenian girls who saved their lives by changing
their names, converting to Islam and marrying Turks -- and whose
grandchildren are unaware today of their own mixed heritage.

All this activity has triggered a nationalist backlash. That should
be expected -- but organizers of the Conference on Ottoman Armenians
were nevertheless surprised last week by a crafty, last-minute
maneuver: a court order to postpone the conference pending the
investigation of hardliners' charges that it was unfairly biased
against Turkey. The cynicism of this order was clear when we learned
that the three-judge panel actually made its decision on Monday; it
was not made public until late Thursday, only hours before the
conference was to begin.

Organizers said they would try to regroup by moving the site from
Bosphorus University, a public institution, to one of the two private
universities that are co-sponsors. We were encouraged by the
immediate public reaction: Not only did some normally mainstream
media voices denounce the court order, but Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, in televised interviews, repeatedly criticized it as
"unacceptable." "You may not like the expression of an opinion," he
said, "but you can't stop it like this." Foreign Minister Gul, in New
York, lamented what effect this would have on Turkey's quest to join
the European Union: "There's no one better at hurting themselves than
us," he said.

Whatever happens with the conference, I believe one thing remains
true: Through the collective efforts of academics, journalists,
writers and media correspondents, 1915 is being opened to discussion
in my homeland as never before. The process is not an easy one and
will disturb many vested interests. I know how hard it is -- most
children from diplomatic families, confronting negative images of
Turkey abroad, develop a sort of defensive nationalism, and it's
especially true among those of us who lived through the years of
Armenian terrorism. But I also know that the journey from denial to
recognition is one that can be made.

Author's e-mail: [email protected]

Elif Shafak is a novelist and a professor of Near Eastern Studies at
the University of Arizona. She commutes between Tucson and Istanbul.

[Gavur]

What about the murdered Muslim Turks?

Saturday, October 1, 2005


Elif Şafak
So the Armenian conference came to an end and many critical papers were presented in public. Unlike what some feared, Turkey didn't collapse, nor did the world stop. The conference was a significant step to speak the unspeakable and to confront a taboo subject. However, more importantly, it was a collective effort. We, as the people of this land, are used to expecting all kinds of social change from “deified individuals.” Our modernization was imposed from above, just like our democracy and our military coups. That's why we are used to such impositions from above. However, real social transformations are those that start from the ground up. The most important aspect of the conference is the fact that it has allowed a burgeoning of critical opinions in a non-hierarchical collective effort. At all panels, both the speakers and the listeners were part of the debate.

The speakers did not agree on every issue. There were differences of opinion and differences of emphasis among us. In other words, contrary to some claims made in the media, it was not a “chorus with a single tone.” However, we listened to and learned from each other. Most importantly, we opened the gates of an extensive scholarly text that has hitherto remained unknown in Turkey but is well established in the West and thus causes a huge epistemological rift between the two.

The ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) positive approach regarding the conference and freedom of expression was highly important for the whole process. The question I am frequently asked here in the United States is, “Was the AKP government really sincere or did it act that way just to look nice in the eyes of the West?” I give the same answer each time: “Yes, the AKP government was sincere. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül played a crucial and positive part in the affair.” And then I add, “Oftentimes Western journalists concentrate solely on the government; however, it might be more plausible to concentrate on the state, that is, the state machinery. The AKP government is also a government restricted by the state institutions. Seeing the conference as “intellectuals versus the government” would be a mistake. It would be more appropriate to see it as “intellectuals and the government despite the state institutions.”

I receive hundreds of messages from American Armenians, American Turks, Americans and Turks. The overwhelming majority of these are sincere, heartwarming, and sad but friendly. I owe a debt of gratitude to those who share their family stories and secrets with me. However, there are some hate-filled messages that come from time to time. Although they are merely one-tenth of the messages I receive, their content is poisonous. They are presumptuous, ultranationalist, sexist messages like, “Mrs. Şafak. Since you taint your pen with the Armenian question, you must have some Armenian blood in your veins.” Then they complain: “What about the murdered Muslims? Why don't you talk about them?”

The debate on 1915 resembles going into a house in mourning. When you enter a house in mourning, you don't ask, “Why are you crying? What right do you have to cry? So and so had also died last year.” One death cannot be used to erase the mourning of another death. The expression, “I cannot talk about the pain Armenians went through. I can only talk about the pain Turks went through,” only means “My heart is so shallow that there is only room for mourning a single tragedy.”

Our minds shall be so broad that we will never compare and contrast one pain with another with the intention of seeing which one weighs heavier. Our conscience needs to be so profound that there will be enough room in it to mourn the pain both Armenians and Turks went through. Both at the same time and both together. This is why, when Turkish nationalists/conservatives object to us by pointing out to the pain Muslim Turks went through, my answer is simple: Yes, let's also talk about the pain Muslim Turks might have suffered at the hands of Armenian rebels, but let's not try to substitute the right to speak on Armenian people's pain with speech on another people's pain. This is not a zero-sum game. We do not have to choose sides at the expense of ignoring the pain of the other. Otherwise, if you cannot find it in your heart to embrace the pain of both peoples at the same time, it makes no difference which side you support.

[Gavur]

'Preposterous claim'

September 30, 2005

Again we read in a newspaper story (Sept. 24) of the Armenian massacres,
the claim by Turkey's apologists that "the [Armenian genocide] deaths
were part of a war in which an equal number of Turks died." The
implication is that losses on both sides were a consequence of World War
I.

Such a claim is preposterous and perverted. Virtually the entire
Armenian population of Turkey in 1915 (whole families, including women
and children) was forcibly deported from its homeland of nearly 3,000
years by the leaders of the much more recently arrived Ottoman Empire.
About 1.5 million died.

That occurred during World War I when Turkey, a member of the Central
Powers together with Germany, was at war with the Allies. Of course, the
Turks did lose many lives in the war (which was not against Armenians).
But an equal number -- more than a million? Hardly.

Armenian lives (families, not military personnel) were lost at the hands
of Turkish forces and the Kurds.

Turkish lives (virtually all military) were lost in a war at the hands
of British and Russian troops.

This needs to be repeated, for the preposterous claim of Turkish
apologists will not cease.

Arra Avakian

Fresno

http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/lets_ed/story/11288701p-12038365c.html

https://www.ancfresno.org

[Gavur]

Turkey: From Failed Reforms to a Modern Jihad Genocide

Part One: Turkey: Back to the Future?
October 4th, 2005

Once again, Turks are storming the heart of Europe. This time, it is not by the sword, but rather in seeking to join the European Union (EU). Once inside the gates, they will gain access to the great cities, wealth, and power of their ancient rivals. Smoothing the way for incorporation of the former would-be conqueror into borderless Europe is an errant belief that Ottoman Turkey was a tolerant multi-cultural civilization. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Recently, security analyst Frank Gaffney wrote a courageous essay, featured in the Washington Times, urging that Turkey's bid to join the EU be rejected. Gaffney highlighted the Islamic Shari'a-based religious revival under the current Erdogan regime as the keystone to his cogent argument. Despite Gaffney's legitimate concerns regarding the current Erdogan government, he reiterates a common, politically-correct canard which ignores the direct nexus between Erdogan's ideology, and the goals and behaviors of Erdogan's Ottoman ancestors. It is ahistorical to speak of "Ottoman tolerance" as distinct from Erdogan's "Islamism", because the Ottoman Empire expanded via three centuries of devastating jihad campaigns, and the flimsy concept of Ottoman tolerance was, in reality, Ottoman-imposed dhimmitude, under the Shari'a.

With formal discussions regarding Turkey's potential EU accession currently underway, this three part essay will elaborate on several apposite historical phenomena: Jihad and dhimmitude under the Ottomans, focusing primarily on Asia Minor and Eastern Europe; the failure of the so-called Ottoman Tanzimat reforms to abrogate the system of dhimmitude; and the dissolution of this Shari'a state whose bloody, convulsive collapse during the first World War included a frank jihad genocide of the Ottoman dhimmi population, once considered most loyal to the Empire, i.e., the Armenians. I believe such an analysis is particularly timely, in light of a December 2004 United Nations Conference which lionized "Ottoman tolerance" as a role model, "… to be adapted even today…" [emphasis added], and Gaffney's reiteration of this profoundly flawed conception, despite his own bold opposition to Turkey's entry into the EU.

Jihad Campaigns of the Seljuks and Ottomans

The historian Michael the Syrian (Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch from 1166 to 1199 C.E.) in his Chronicle reproducing earlier contemporary sources, made important observations regarding events which occurred beginning in the third decade of the 11th century. He noted,

“…the commencement of the exodus of the Turks to…Syria and the coast of Palestine…[Where] They subdued all the countries by cruel devastation and plunder” [1] Subsequently, “Turks and Arabs were mixing together like a single people…Such was the rule of the Turks amidst the Arabs” [2]

Expanding upon this contemporary account, and the vast array of other primary sources- Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Latin, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian. [3] Bat Ye’or concludes, [4]

…the two waves of Muslim expansion, the Arab from the seventh century, and the Turkish four centuries later- are remarkably similar…The great Arab and Turkish conquerors used the same military tactics and the same policies of consolidating Islamic power. This continuity resulted from the fact that the conquests took place within the framework of the common ideology of jihad and the administrative and juridical apparatus of the shari’a- a uniformity that defies time, since it adapts itself to diverse lands and peoples, being integrated into the internal coherence of a political theology. In the course of their military operations, the Turks applied to the conquered populations the rules of jihad, which had been structured four centuries earlier by the Arabs and enshrined in Islamic religious law.

The Seljuk and Ottoman jihad campaigns were spearheaded by “Ghazi” (from the word ghazwa or “razzia”) movements, “Warriors of the Faith”, brought together under the banner of Islam to fight infidels, and obtain booty. Wittek [5] and Vryonis [6] have stressed the significance of this movement, in its Seljuk incarnation, at the most critical frontier of Islam during the 11th and 12th centuries, i.e., eastern Anatolia. Vryonis notes, [7]

When the Arab traveler al-Harawi passed through these border regions in the second half of the 12th century, he noted the existence of a shrine on the Byzantine-Turkish borders (near Afyon-Karahisar) which was reported to be the tomb of the Muslim martyr Abu Muhammd al-Battal, and at Amorium the tombs of those who fell in the celebrated siege of the city in 838. These constitute fascinating testimony to the fact that the ghazi-jihad tradition was closely intertwined into the nomadic society of Phrygia. Not only was there evidence of a nomadic invasion but also of an epic society in its heroic age, and it is from this milieu that the Turkish epics were shaped: the Battalname, the Danishmendname, and the Dusturname.

Wittek, citing the oldest known Ottoman source, the versified chronicle of Ahmedi, maintains that the 14th century Ottomans believed they too,

“were a community of Ghazis, of champions of the Mohammedan religion; a community of the Moslem march- warriors, devoted to the struggle with the infidels in their neighborhood” [8].

The contemporary Turkish scholar of Ottoman history, Halil Inalcik, has also emphasized the importance of Muslim religious zeal- expressed through jihad- as a primary motivation for the conquests of the Ottoman Turks: [9]

The ideal of gaza, Holy War, was an important factor in the foundation and development of the Ottoman state. Society in the frontier principalities conformed to a particular cultural pattern imbued with the ideal of continuous Holy War and continuous expansion of the Dar ul Islam-the realms of Islam- until they covered the whole world.

Incited by pious Muslim theologians, these ghazis were at the vanguard of both the Seljuk and Ottoman jihad conquests. Vacalopoulos highlights the role of the dervishes during the Ottoman campaigns: [10]

…fanatical dervishes and other devout Muslim leaders…constantly toiled for the dissemination of Islam. They had done so from the very beginning of the Ottoman state and had played an important part in the consolidation and extension of Islam. These dervishes were particularly active in the uninhabited frontier regions of the east. Here they settled down with their families, attracted other settlers, and thus became the virtual founders of whole new villages, whose inhabitants invariably exhibited the same qualities of deep religious fervor. From places such as these, the dervishes or their agents would emerge to take part in new military enterprises for the extension of the Islamic state. In return, the state granted them land and privileges under a generous prescription which required only that the land be cultivated and communications secured.

Brief overviews of the Seljuk and Ottoman jihad campaigns which ultimately Islamized Asia Minor, have been provided by Vryonis and Vacalopoulos. First, the schematic, clinical assessment of Vryonis: [11]

The conquest, or should I say the conquests of Asia Minor were in operation over a period of four centuries. Thus the Christian societies of Asia Minor were submitted to extensive periods of intense warfare, incursions, and destructions which undermined the existence of the Christian church. In the first century of Turkish conquests and invasions from the mid-eleventh to the late twelfth century, the sources reveal that some 63 towns and villages were destroyed. The inhabitants of other towns and villages were enslaved and taken off to the Muslim slave
markets.

Vacalopoulos describes the conquests in more animated detail: [12]

At the beginning of the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks forced their way into Armenia and there crushed the armies of several petty Armenian states. No fewer than forty thousand souls fled before the organized pillage of the Seljuk host to the western part of Asia Minor…From the middle of the eleventh century, and especially after the battle of Malazgirt [Manzikurt] (1071), the Seljuks spread throughout the whole Asia Minor peninsula, leaving terror, panic and destruction in their wake. Byzantine, Turkish and other contemporary sources are unanimous in their agreement on the extent of havoc wrought and the protracted anguish of the local population…evidence as we have proves that the Hellenic population of Asia Minor, whose very vigor had so long sustained the Empire and might indeed be said to have constituted its greatest strength, succumbed so rapidly to Turkish pressure that by the fourteenth century, it was confined to a few limited areas. By that time, Asia Minor was already being called Turkey…one after another, bishoprics and metropolitan sees which once throbbed with Christian vitality became vacant and ecclesiastical buildings fell into ruins. The metropolitan see of Chalcedon, for example, disappeared in the fourteenth century, and the sees of Laodicea, Kotyaeon (now Kutahya) and Synada in the fifteenth…With the extermination of local populations or their precipitate flight, entire villages, cities, and sometimes whole provinces fell into decay. There were some fertile districts like the valley of the Maeander River, once stocked with thousands of sheep and cattle, which were laid waste and thereafter ceased to be in any way productive. Other districts were literally transformed into wildernesses. Impenetrable thickets sprang up in places where once there had been luxuriant fields and pastures. This is what happened to the district of Sangarius, for example, which Michael VIII Palaeologus had known formerly as a prosperous, cultivated land, but whose utter desolation he afterwards surveyed in utmost despair…The mountainous region between Nicaea and Nicomedia, opposite Constantinople, once clustered with castles, cities, and villages, was depopulated. A few towns escaped total destruction- Laodicea, Iconium, Bursa (then Prusa), and Sinope, for example- but the extent of devastation elsewhere was such as to make a profound impression on visitors for many years to come. The fate of Antioch provides a graphic illustration of the kind of havoc wrought by the Turkish invaders: in 1432, only three hundred dwellings could be counted inside its walls, and its predominantly Turkish or Arab inhabitants subsisted by raising camels, goats, cattle, and sheep. Other cities in the southeastern part of Asia Minor fell into similar decay.

The Islamization of Asia Minor was complemented by parallel and subsequent Ottoman jihad campaigns in the Balkans [13]. As of 1326 C.E., yearly razzias by the emirs of Asia Minor targeted southern Thrace, southern Macedonia, and the coastal areas of southern Greece. Around 1360 C.E., the Ottomans, under Suleiman (son of Sultan Orchan), and later Sultan Murad I (1359-1389), launched bona fide campaigns of jihad conquest, capturing and occupying a series of cities and towns in Byzantine and Bulgarian Thrace. Following the battle of Cernomen (September 26, 1371), the Ottomans penetrated westward, occupying within 15 years, a large number of towns in western Bulgaria, and in Macedonia. Ottoman invasions during this period also occurred in the Peloponnesus, central Greece, Epirus, Thessaly, Albania, and Montenegro. By 1388 most of northeast Bulgaria was conquered, and following the battle of Kosovo (1389), Serbia came under Ottoman suzerainty. Vacalopoulos argues that internecine warring, as well as social and political upheaval, prevented the Balkan populations- Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Serbians- from uniting against the common Ottoman enemy, thus sealing their doom. Indeed, he observes that, [14]

After the defeat of the Serbs at Cirmen (or Cernomen) near the Hebrus River in 1371, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the Byzantine Empire became tributaries of the Ottoman Empire and were obliged to render assistance in Ottoman campaigns.

Bayezid I (1389-1402) undertook devastating campaigns in Bosnia, Hungary, and Wallachia, in addition to turning south and again attacking central Greece and the Peloponnesus. After a hiatus during their struggle against the Mongol invaders, the Ottomans renewed their Balkan offensive in 1421. Successful Ottoman campaigns were waged in the Peloponnesus, Serbia, and Hungary, culminating with the victory at the second Battle of Kosovo (1448). With the accession to power of Mehmed II, the Ottomans commenced their definitive conquest of the Balkan peninsula. Constantinople was captured on May 29, 1453, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire. By 1460, the Ottomans had completely vanquished both Serbia and the Peloponnesus. Bosnia and Trebizond fell in 1463, followed by Albania in 1468. With the conquest of Herzegovina in 1483, the Ottomans became rulers of the entire Balkan peninsula.

Vacalopoulos, commenting on the initial Ottoman forays into Thrace during the mid 14th century, and Angelov, who provides an overall assessment highlighting the later campaigns of Murad II (1421-1451) and Mehmed II (1451-1481), elucidate the impact of the Ottoman jihad on the vanquished Balkan populations:

From the very beginning of the Turkish onslaught [in Thrace] under Suleiman [son of Sultan Orchan], the Turks tried to consolidate their position by the forcible imposition of Islam. If [the Ottoman historian] Sukrullah is to be believed, those who refused to accept the Moslem faith were slaughtered and their families enslaved. “Where there were bells”, writes the same author [i.e., Sukrullah], “Suleiman broke them up and cast them into fires. Where there were churches he destroyed them or converted them into mosques. Thus, in place of bells there were now muezzins. Wherever Christian infidels were still found, vassalage was imposed on their rulers. At least in public they could no longer say ‘kyrie eleison’ but rather ‘There is no God but Allah’; and where once their prayers had been addressed to Christ, they were now to “Muhammad, the prophet of Allah’.” [15]

…the conquest of the Balkan Peninsula accomplished by the Turks over the course of about two centuries caused the incalculable ruin of material goods, countless massacres, the enslavement and exile of a great part of the population – in a word, a general and protracted decline of productivity, as was the case with Asia Minor after it was occupied by the same invaders. This decline in productivity is all the more striking when one recalls that in the mid-fourteenth century, as the Ottomans were gaining a foothold on the peninsula, the States that existed there – Byzantium, Bulgaria and Serbia – had already reached a rather high level of economic and cultural development....The campaigns of Mourad II (1421-1451) and especially those of his successor, Mahomet II (1451-1481) in Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and in the Byzantine princedom of the Peloponnesus, were of a particularly devastating character. During the campaign that the Turks launched in Serbia in 1455-1456, Belgrade, Novo-Bardo and other towns were to a great extent destroyed. The invasion of the Turks in Albania during the summer of 1459 caused enormous havoc. According to the account of it written by Kritobulos, the invaders destroyed the entire harvest and leveled the fortified towns that they had captured. The country was afflicted with further devastation in 1466 when the Albanians, after putting up heroic resistance, had to withdraw into the most inaccessible regions, from which they continued the struggle. Many cities were likewise ruined during the course of the campaign led by Mahomet II in 1463 against Bosnia – among them Yaytzé, the capital of the Kingdom of Bosnia…But it was the Peloponnesus that suffered most from the Turkish invasions. It was invaded in 1446 by the armies of Murad II, which destroyed a great number of places and took thousands of prisoners. Twelve years later, during the summer of 1458, the Balkan Peninsula was invaded by an enormous Turkish army under the command of Mahomet II and his first lieutenant Mahmoud Pasha. After a siege that lasted four months, Corinth fell into enemy hands. Its walls were razed, and many places that the sultan considered useless were destroyed. The work by Kritobulos contains an account of the Ottoman campaigns, which clearly shows us the vast destruction caused by the invaders in these regions. Two years later another Turkish army burst into the Peloponnesus. This time Gardiki and several other places were ruined. Finally, in 1464, for the third time, the destructive rage of the invaders was aimed at the Peloponnesus. That was when the Ottomans battled the Venetians and leveled the city of Argos to its foundations. [16]

[Gavur]

Part Two: Ottoman Dhimmitude

October 7th, 2005

In examining how the non-Muslim populations vanquished by the Ottoman jihad campaigns fared, it is useful to begin with the Jews, the least numerous population, who are also generally believed to have had quite a positive experience. Joseph Hacker studied the fate of Jews during their initial absorption into the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries. His research questions the uncritical view that from its outset the, “..Jewish experience” in the Ottoman Empire “..was a calm, peaceful, and fruitful one..”.Hacker notes: [17]

…It would seem to me that this accepted view of consistently good relations between the Ottomans and the Jews during the 15th century should be modified in light of new research and manuscript resources.

The Jews, like other inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire, suffered heavily from the Ottoman jihad conquests and policies of colonization and population transfer (i.e., the surgun system). This explains the disappearance of several Jewish communities, including Salonica, and their founding anew by Spanish Jewish immigrants. Hacker observes, specifically: [18]

…We possess letters written about the fate of Jews who underwent one or another of the Ottoman conquests. In one of the letters which was written before 1470, there is a description of the fate of such a Jew and his community, according to which description, written in Rhodes and sent to Crete, the fate of the Jews was not different from that of Christians. Many were killed; others were taken captive, and children were [enslaved, forcibly converted to Islam, and] brought to devshirme...Some letters describe the carrying of the captive Jews to Istanbul and are filled with anti-Ottoman sentiments. Moreover, we have a description of the fate of a Jewish doctor and homilist from Veroia (Kara-Ferya) who fled to Negroponte when his community was driven into exile in 1455. He furnished us with a description of the exiles and their forced passage to Istanbul. Later on we find him at Istanbul itself, and in a homily delivered there in 1468 he expressed his anti-Ottoman feelings openly. We also have some evidence that the Jews of Constantinople suffered from the conquest of the city and that several were sold into slavery.

Three summary conclusions are drawn by Hacker: (i) Strong anti-Ottoman feelings prevailed in some Byzantine Jewish circles in the first decades after the fall of Constantinople. These feelings were openly expressed by people living under Latin rule and to some extent even in Istanbul.; (ii) Mehmed II's policies toward non-Muslims made possible the substantial economic and social development of the Jewish communities in the empire, and especially in the capital - Istanbul. These communities were protected by him against popular hatred, and especially from blood libels. However, this policy was not continued by Bayezid II and there is evidence that under his rule the Jews suffered severe restrictions in their religious life.; (iii) The friendly policies of Mehmed on the one hand, and the good reception by Bayezid II of Spanish Jewry on the other, cause the Jewish writers of the sixteenth century to overlook both the destruction which Byzantine Jewry suffered during the Ottoman conquests and the later outbursts of oppression under both Bayezid II and Selim I.

Ivo Andric analyzed [19] the “rayah” (meaning “herd”, and “to graze a herd”) or dhimmi condition imposed upon the indigenous Christian population of Bosnia, for four centuries. Those native Christian inhabitants who refused to apostasize to Islam lived under the Ottoman Kanun-i-Rayah, which merely reiterated [20] the essential regulations of dhimmitude originally formulated by Muslim jurists and theologians in the 7th and 8th centuries C.E. Andric’s presentation musters, [21]

…a wealth of irrefutable evidence that the main points of the Kanun, just those that cut the deepest into the moral and economic life of Christians, remained in full force right up to the end of Turkish rule and as long as the Turks had the power to apply them…[thus] it was inevitable that the rayah decline to a status that was economically inferior and dependent

Andric cites a Bosnian Muslim proverb, and a song honoring Sultan Bayezid II, whose shared perspectives reflect Muslim attitudes toward the Christian rayahs: [22]

[proverb] “The rayah is like the grass,/Mow it as much as you will, still it springs up anew”

[song] “Once you’d broken Bosnia’s horns/You mowed down what would not be pruned/Leaving only the riffraff behind/So there’d be someone left to serve us and grieve before the cross”

These prevailing discriminatory conditions were exacerbated by Bosnia’s serving as either a battlefield or staging ground during two centuries of Ottoman razzias and formal jihad campaigns against Hungary. Overcome by excessive taxation and conscript labor,

Christians therefore began to abandon their houses and plots of land situated in level country and along the roads and to retreat back into the mountains. And as they did so, moving ever higher into inaccessible regions, Muslims took over their former sites. [23]

Moreover, those Christians living in towns suffered from the rayah system’s mandated impediments to commercial advancement by non-Muslims: [24]

Islam from the very outset, excluded such activities as making wine, breeding pigs, and selling pork products from commercial production and trade. But additionally Bosnian Christians were forbidden to be saddlers, tanners, or candlemakers or to trade in honey, butter, and certain other items. Countrywide, the only legal market day was Sunday. Christians were thus deliberately faced with the choice between ignoring the precepts of their religion, keeping their shops open and working on Sundays, or alternatively, forgoing participation in the market and suffering material loss thereby. Even in 1850, in Jukic’s “Wishes and Entreaties” we find him beseeching “his Imperial grace” to put an end to the regulation that Sunday be market day.

Christians were also forced to pay disproportionately higher taxes than Muslims, including the intentionally degrading non-Muslim poll-tax.

This tax was paid by every non-Muslim male who had passed his fourteenth year, at the rate of a ducat per annum. But since Turkey had never known birth registers, the functionary whose job it was to exact the tax measured the head and neck of each boy with a piece of string and judged from that whether a person had arrived at a taxable age or not. Starting as an abuse that soon turned into an ingrained habit, then finally established custom, by the last century of Turkish rule every boy without distinction found himself summoned to pay the head tax. And it would seem this was not the only abuse…Of Ali-Pasa Stocevic, who during the first half of the nineteenth century was vizier and all but unlimited ruler of Herzegovina, his contemporary, the monk Prokopije Cokorilo, wrote that he “taxed the dead for six years after their demise” and that his tax collectors “ran their fingers over the bellies of pregnant women, saying ‘you will probably have a boy, so you have to pay the poll tax right away…The following folk saying from Bosnia reveals how taxes were exacted: “He’s as fat as if he’d been tax collecting in Bosnia” [25]

The specific Kanun-i-Rayah stipulations which prohibited the rayahs from riding a saddled horse, carrying a saber or any other weapon in or out of doors, selling wine, letting their hair grow, or wearing wide sashes, were strictly enforced until the mid-19th century. Hussamudin-Pasa, in 1794 issued an ordinance which prescribed the exact color and type of clothing the Bosnian rayah had to wear. Barbers were prohibited from shaving Muslims with the same razors used for Christians. Even in bathhouses, Christians were required to have specifically marked towels and aprons to avoid confusing their laundry with laundry designated for Muslims. Until at least 1850, and in some parts of Bosnia, well into the 1860s, a Christian upon encountering a Muslim, was required to jump down from his (unsaddled) horse, move to the side of the road, and wait for the latter to pass. [26]

Christianity’s loud and most arresting symbol, church bells, Andric notes [27], always drew close, disapproving Turkish scrutiny, and, “Wherever there invasions would go, down came the bells, to be destroyed or melted into cannon”. Predictably,

Until the second half of the nineteenth century, “nobody in Bosnia could even think of bells or bell towers.” Only in 1860 did the Sarajevo priest Fra Grgo Martic manage to get permission from Topal Osman-Pasa to hang a bell at the church in Kresevo. Permission was granted, thought, only on condition that “at first the bell be rung softly to let the Turks get accustomed to it little by little”. And still the Muslim of Kresevo were complaining, even in 1875, to Sarajevo that “the Turkish ear and ringing bells cannot coexist in the same place at the same time”; and Muslim women would beat on their copper pots to drown out the noise…on 30 April 1872, the new Serbian Orthodox church also got a bell. But since the…Muslims had threatened to riot, the military had to be called in to ensure that the ceremony might proceed undisturbed. [28]

The imposition of such disabilities, Andric observes, [29] extended beyond church ceremonies, as reflected by a 1794 proclamation of the Serbian Orthodox church in Sarajevo warning Christians not to

…sing during …outings, nor in their houses, nor in other places. The saying “Don’t sing too loud, this village is Turk” testifies eloquently to the fact that this item of the Kanun [- i-Rayah] was applied outside church life as well as within.

Andric concludes, [30]

…for their Christian subjects, their [Ottoman Turkish] hegemony brutalized custom and meant a step to the rear in every respect.

Finally, Jovan Cvijic, the Serbian sociologist and geographer, observed,

There are regions where the [Serb] Christian population…lived under the regime of fear from birth to death

Despite the liberation of the Balkans in 1912, Cvijic further noted that the Serbs were not fully cognizant of their new status, and this fear could still be read, remaining etched on their faces. [31]

Paul Ricaut, the British consul in Smyrna, journeyed extensively within the Ottoman Empire during the mid-17th century, becoming a keen observer of its sociopolitical milieu. In 1679 (i.e., prior to the Ottomans being repulsed at Vienna in September, 1683; see later discussion of Ottoman “tolerance”), Ricaut published these important findings [32]: (i) many Christians were expelled from their churches, which the Ottoman Turks converted into mosques; (ii) the “Mysteries of the Altar” were hidden in subterranean vaults and sepulchers whose roofs were barely above the surface of the ground; (iii) fearing Turkish hostility and oppression, Christian priests, particularly in eastern Asia Minor, were compelled to live with great caution and officiate in private obscurity; (iv) not surprisingly, to escape these prevailing conditions, many Christians apostacized to Islam. Moreover, as Vryonis demonstrated convincingly for the earlier period between the 11th and 15th centuries [33], the existence of cryto-Christianity and neomartyrs were not uncommon phenomena in the Christian territories of Asia Minor conquered by the waves of Seljuk and Ottoman jihad. He cites, for example, a pastoral letter from 1338 addressed to the residents of Nicaea indicating widespread, forcible conversion by the Turks: [34]

And they [Turks] having captured and enslaved many of our own and violently forced them and dragging them along alas! So that they took up their evil and godlessness.

The phenomenon of forcible conversion, including coercive en masse conversions, persisted throughout the 16th century, as discussed by Constantelos in his analysis of neomartyrdom in the Ottoman Empire: [35]

…mass forced conversions were recorded during the caliphates of Selim I (1512-1520),…Selim II (1566-1574), and Murat III (1574-1595). On the occasion of some anniversary, such as the capture of a city, or a national holiday, many rayahs were forced to apostacize. On the day of the circumcision of Mohammed III great numbers of Christians (Albanians, Greeks, Slavs) were forced to convert to Islam.

Reviewing the martyrology of Christians victimized by the Ottomans from the conquest of Constantinople (1453), through the final phases of the Greek War of Independence (1828), Constantelos indicates: [36]

…the Ottoman Turks condemned to death eleven Ecumenical Patriarchs of Constantinople, nearly one hundred bishops, and several thousand priests, deacons, and minks. It is impossible to say with certainty how many men of the cloth were forced to apostasize.

However, the more mundane cases illustrated by Constantelos are of equal significance in revealing the plight of Christians under Ottoman rule, through at least 1867: [37]

Some were accused of insulting the Muslim faith or of throwing something against the wall of a mosque. Others were accused of sexual advances toward a Turk; still others of making a public confession such as “I will become a Turk” without meaning it.

Constantelos concludes: [38]

The story of the neomartyrs indicates that there was no liberty of conscience in the Ottoman Empire and that religious persecution was never absent from the state. Justice was subject to the passions of judges as well as of the crowds, and it was applied with a double standard, lenient for Muslims and harsh for Christians and others. The view that the Ottoman Turks pursued a policy of religious toleration in order to promote a fusion of the Turks with the conquered populations is not sustained by the facts.

Even the Turcophilic 19th century travel writer Ubicini acknowledged the oppressive burden of Ottoman dhimmitude in this moving depiction: [39]

The history of enslaved peoples is the same everywhere, or rather, they have no history. The years, the centuries pass without bringing any change to their situation. Generations come and go in silence. One might think they are afraid to awaken their masters, asleep alongside them. However, if you examine them closely you discover that this immobility is only superficial. A silent and constant agitation grips them. Life has entirely withdrawn into the heart. They resemble those rivers which have disappeared underground; if you put your ear to the earth, you can hear the muffled sound of their waters; then they re-emerge intact a few leagues away. Such is the state of the Christian populations of Turkey under Ottoman rule.

Vacalopoulos describes how jihad imposed dhimmitude under Ottoman rule provided critical motivation for the Greek Revolution: [40]

The Revolution of 1821 is no more than the last great phase of the resistance of the Greeks to Ottoman domination; it was a relentless, undeclared war, which had begun already in the first years of servitude. The brutality of an autocratic regime, which was characterized by economic spoliation, intellectual decay and cultural retrogression, was sure to provoke opposition. Restrictions of all kinds, unlawful taxation, forced labor, persecutions, violence, imprisonment, death, abductions of girls and boys and their confinement to Turkish harems, and various deeds of wantonness and lust, along with numerous less offensive excesses – all these were a constant challenge to the instinct of survival and they defied every sense of human decency. The Greeks bitterly resented all insults and humiliations, and their anguish and frustration pushed them into the arms of rebellion. There was no exaggeration in the statement made by one of the beys if Arta, when he sought to explain the ferocity of the struggle. He said: ‘We have wronged the rayas [dhimmis] (i.e. our Christian subjects) and destroyed both their wealth and honor; they became desperate and took up arms. This is just the beginning and will finally lead to the destruction of our empire.’ The sufferings of the Greeks under Ottoman rule were therefore the basic cause of the insurrection; a psychological incentive was provided by the very nature of the circumstances.

The Devshirme and Harem Slavery

Those scholars [41] who continue to adhere to the roseate narrative of Ottoman “tolerance”, the notion that an “…easy-going tolerance, resting on an assumption not only of superior religion, but also of superior power”, which it is claimed, persisted in the Ottoman Empire until the end of the 17th century [42], must address certain basic questions. Why has the quite brutal Ottoman devshirme-janissary system, which, from the mid to late 14th, through early 18th centuries, enslaved and forcibly converted to Islam an estimated 500,000 to one million [43] non-Muslim (primarily Balkan Christian) adolescent males, been characterized, reductio ad absurdum, as a benign form of social advancement, jealously pined for by “ineligible” Ottoman Muslim families? For example,

[Gavur]

The role played by the Balkan Christian boys recruited into the Ottoman service through the devshirme is well known. Great numbers of them entered the Ottoman military and bureaucratic apparatus, which for a while came to be dominated by these new recruits to the Ottoman state and the Muslim faith. This ascendancy of Balkan Europeans into the Ottoman power structure did not pass unnoticed, and there are many complaints from other elements, sometimes from the Caucasian slaves who were their main competitors, and more vocally from the old and free Muslims, who felt slighted by the preference given to the newly converted slaves. [44]

Scholars who have conducted serious, detailed studies of the devshirme-janissary system, do not share such hagiographic views of this Ottoman institution. Speros Vryonis, Jr. for example, makes these deliberately understated, but cogent observations, [45]

…in discussing the devshirme we are dealing with the large numbers of Christians who, in spite of the material advantages offered by conversion to Islam, chose to remain members of a religious society which was denied first class citizenship. Therefore the proposition advanced by some historians, that the Christians welcomed the devshirme as it opened up wonderful opportunities for their children, is inconsistent with the fact that these Christians had not chosen to become Muslims in the first instance but had remained Christians…there is abundant testimony to the very active dislike with which they viewed the taking of their children. One would expect such sentiments given the strong nature of the family bond and given also the strong attachment to Christianity of those who had not apostacized to Islam…First of all the Ottomans capitalized on the general Christian fear of losing their children and used offers of devshirme exemption in negotiations for surrender of Christian lands. Such exemptions were included in the surrender terms granted to Jannina, Galata, the Morea, Chios, etc…Christians who engaged in specialized activities which were important to the Ottoman state were likewise exempt from the tax on their children by way of recognition of the importance of their labors for the empire…Exemption from this tribute was considered a privilege and not a penalty…

…there are other documents wherein their [i.e., the Christians] dislike is much more explicitly apparent. These include a series of Ottoman documents dealing with the specific situations wherein the devshirmes themselves have escaped from the officials responsible for collecting them…A firman…in 1601 [regarding the devshirme] provided the [Ottoman] officials with stern measures of enforcement, a fact which would seem to suggest that parents were not always disposed to part with their sons.

“..to enforce the command of the known and holy fetva [fatwa] of Seyhul [Shaikh]- Islam. In accordance with this whenever some one of the infidel parents or some other should oppose the giving up of his son for the Janissaries, he is immediately hanged from his door-sill, his blood being deemed unworthy.”

Vasiliki Papoulia highlights the continuous desperate, often violent struggle of the Christian populations against this forcefully imposed Ottoman levy: [46]

It is obvious that the population strongly resented…this measure [and the levy] could be carried out only by force. Those who refused to surrender their sons- the healthiest, the handsomest and the most intelligent- were on the spot put to death by hanging. Nevertheless we have examples of armed resistance. In 1565 a revolt took place in Epirus and Albania. The inhabitants killed the recruiting officers and the revolt was put down only after the sultan sent five hundred janissaries in support of the local sanjak-bey. We are better informed, thanks to the historic archives of Yerroia, about the uprising in Naousa in 1705 where the inhabitants killed the Silahdar Ahmed Celebi and his assistants and fled to the mountains as rebels. Some of them were later arrested and put to death..

Since there was no possibility of escaping [the levy] the population resorted to several subterfuges. Some left their villages and fled to certain cities which enjoyed exemption from the child levy or migrated to Venetian-held territories. The result was a depopulation of the countryside. Others had their children marry at an early age…Nicephorus Angelus…states that at times the children ran away on their own initiative, but when they heard that the authorities had arrested their parents and were torturing them to death, returned and gave themselves up. La Giulletiere cites the case of a young Athenian who returned from hiding in order to save his father’s life and then chose to die himself rather than abjure his faith. According to the evidence in Turkish sources, some parents even succeeded in abducting their children after they had been recruited. The most successful way of escaping recruitment was through bribery. That the latter was very widespread is evident from the large amounts of money confiscated by the sultan from corrupt…officials. Finally, in their desperation the parents even appealed to the Pope and the Western powers for help.

Papoulia concludes: [47]

…there is no doubt that this heavy burden was one of the hardest tribulations of the Christian population.

Why was there never a significant “Shari’a-inspired” slavery abolition movement within the Ottoman states, comparable to the courageous and successful campaigns lead by Western Christian statesmen (such as the Evangelical Parliamentarian,William Wilberforce [48] ) in Europe and America, throughout the 19th century? Deliberately limited and ineffectual firmans issued by the Ottoman Porte failed to discourage East African slave trading [49], and even British naval power, so successful in the Atlantic and Indian oceans [50], was unable to suppress the Red Sea slave trade to the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century. [51] Regardless, as Reuben Levy notes: [52]

At Constantinople, the sale of women slaves, both negresses and Circassians [likely for harem slavery and/or concubinage], continued to be openly practiced until…1908.

[Gavur]

Part Three: Turkey: From Failed Reforms to a Modern Jihad Genocide

October 8th, 2005

Turkey’s ardent desire to enter the European Union may be fulfilled in the near future. As Europe grapples with the prospect of admitting an Islamic nation with a fast-growing population into the borderless would-be superstate, the claim is being made that Turkey’s history is one of relative tolerance. Europeans are instructed not to worry. This is the third in a three-part series examining the history of Turkey’s “tolerant” version of Islam. Part 1 may be found here, and Part 2 here.

Why did the Tanzimat reforms, designed to abrogate the Ottoman version of the system of dhimmitude, need to be imposed by European powers through treaties, as so-called “capitulations” following Ottoman military defeats, and why even then, were these reforms never implemented in any meaningful way from 1839, until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I ?

Edouard Engelhardt [53] made these observations from his detailed analysis of the Tanzimat period, noting that a quarter century after the Crimean War (1853-56), and the second iteration of Tanzimat reforms, the same problems persisted:

Muslim society has not yet broken with the prejudices which make the conquered peoples subordinate…the raya [dhimmis] remain inferior to the Osmanlis; in fact he is not rehabilitated; the fanaticism of the early days has not relented…[even liberal Muslims rejected]…civil and political equality, that is to say, the assimilation of the conquered with the conquerors.

A systematic examination of the condition of the Christian rayas was conducted in the 1860s by British consuls stationed throughout the Ottoman Empire, yielding extensive primary source documentary evidence. [54]. Britain was then Turkey's most powerful ally, and it was in her strategic interest to see that oppression of the Christians was eliminated, to prevent direct, aggressive Russian or Austrian intervention. On July 22, 1860, Consul James Zohrab sent a lengthy report from Sarajevo to his ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Henry Bulwer, analyzing the administration of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, again, following the 1856 Tanzimat reforms. Referring to the reform efforts, Zohrab states: [55]

The Hatti-humayoun, I can safely say, practically remains a dead letter…while [this] does not extend to permitting the Christians to be treated as they formerly were treated, is so far unbearable and unjust in that it permits the Mussulmans to despoil them with heavy exactions. False imprisonments (imprisonment under false accusation) are of daily occurence. A Christian has but a small chance of exculpating himself when his opponent is a Mussulman (...) Christian evidence, as a rule, is still refused (...) Christians are now permitted to possess real property, but the obstacles which they meet with when they attempt to acquire it are so many and vexatious that very few have as yet dared to brave them…Such being, generally speaking, the course pursued by the Government towards the Christians in the capital (Sarajevo) of the province where the Consular Agents of the different Powers reside and can exercise some degree of control, it may easily be guessed to what extend the Christians, in the remoter districts, suffer who are governed by Mudirs (governors) generally fanatical and unacquainted with the (new reforms of the) law..

In his comprehensive study of 19th century Palestinian Jewry under Ottoman rule Tudor Parfitt made these germane observations: [56]

Inside the towns, Jews and other dhimmis were frequently attacked, wounded, and even killed by local Muslims and Turkish soldiers. Such attacks were frequently for trivial reasons: Wilson [in British Foreign Office correspondence] recalled having met a Jew who had been badly wounded by a Turkish soldier for not having instantly dismounted when ordered to give up his donkey to a soldier of the Sultan. Many Jews were killed for less. On occasion the authorities attempted to get some form of redress but this was by no means always the case: the Turkish authorities themselves were sometimes responsible for beating Jews to death for some unproven charge. After one such occasion [British Consul] Young remarked: ‘I must say I am sorry and surprised that the Governor could have acted so savage a part- for certainly what I have seen of him I should have thought him superior to such wanton inhumanity- but it was a Jew- without friends or protection- it serves to show well that it is not without reason that the poor Jew, even in the nineteenth century, lives from day to day in terror of his life’.

…In fact, it took some time [i.e., at least a decade after the 1839 reforms] before these courts did accept dhimmi testimony in Palestine. The fact that Jews were represented on the meclis [provincial legal council] did not contribute a great deal to the amelioration of the legal position of the Jews: the Jewish representatives were tolerated grudgingly and were humiliated and intimidated to the point that they were afraid to offer any opposition to the Muslim representatives. In addition the constitution of the meclis was in no sense fairly representative of the population. In Jerusalem in the 1870s the meclis consisted of four Muslims, three Christians and only one Jew- at a time when Jews constituted over half the population of the city…Some years after the promulgation of the hatt-i-serif [Tanzimat reform edicts] Binyamin [in an eyewitness account from Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855, p.44] was still able to write of the Jews- “they are entirely destitute of every legal protection”…Perhaps even more to the point, the courts were biased against the Jews and even when a case was heard in a properly assembled court where dhimmi testimony was admissible the court would still almost invariably rule against the Jews. It should be noted that a non-dhimmi [eg., foreign] Jew was still not permitted to appear and witness in either the mahkama [specific Muslim council] or the meclis.

The modern Ottomanist Roderick Davison acknowledges that the reforms failed, and offers an explanation based on Islamic beliefs intrinsic to the system of dhimmitude: [57]

No genuine equality was ever attained…there remained among the Turks an intense Muslim feeling which could sometimes burst into an open fanaticism…More important than the possibility of fanatic outbursts, however, was the innate attitude of superiority which the Muslim Turk possessed. Islam was for him the true religion. Christianity was only a partial revelation of the truth, which Muhammad finally revealed in full; therefore Christians were not equal to Muslims in possession of truth. Islam was not only a way of worship, it was a way of life as well. It prescribed man’s relations to man, as well as to God, and was the basis for society, for law, and for government. Christians were therefore inevitably considered second-class citizens in the light of religious revelation—as well as by reason of the plain fact that they had been conquered by the Ottomans. This whole Muslim outlook was often summed up in the common term gavur (or kafir), which means ‘unbeliever’ or ‘infidel’, with emotional and quite uncomplimentary overtones. To associate closely or on terms of equality with the gavur was dubious at best. “Familiar association with heathens and infidels is forbidden to the people of Islam,” said Asim, an early nineteenth-century historian, “and friendly and intimate intercourse between two parties that are one to another as darkness and light is far from desirable”…The mere idea of equality, especially the anti-defamation clause of 1856, offended the Turks’ inherent sense of the rightness of things. “Now we can’t call a gavur a gavur”, it was said, sometimes bitterly, sometimes in matter-of-fact explanation that under the new dispensation the plain truth could no longer be spoken openly. Could reforms be acceptable which forbade calling a spade a spade?...The Turkish mind, conditioned by centuries of Muslim and Ottoman dominance, was not yet ready to accept any absolute equality…Ottoman equality was not attained in the Tanzimat period [i.e., mid to late 19th century, 1839-1876], nor yet after the Young Turk revolution of 1908…

Indeed, an influential member of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, Sheik Abd-ul-Hack, a “progressive” Young Turk, made this revealing declaration writing in a Parisian Muslim review, (Le Mecherouttiete, edited by Sherif Pasha, Paris), in August, 1912: [58]

Yes! The Musulman religion is in open hostility to all your world of progress. Understand, you European observers, that a Christian, whatever his position may be, by the mere fact of his being a Christian is regarded by us as a blind man lost to all sense of human dignity. Our reasoning with regard to him is as simple as it is definitive. We say: the man whose judgment is so perverted as to deny the existence of a one and only God, and to make up gods of different sorts, can only be the meanest expression of human degradation; to speak to him would be a humiliation for our intelligence and an insult to the grandeur of the Master of the Universe. The presence of such miscreants among us is the bane of our existence; their doctrine is a direct insult to the purity of our faith; contact with them is a defilement of our bodies; any relation with them a torture to our souls. Though detesting you, we have condescended to study your political institutions and your military organization. Over and above the new weapons that Providence procures for us through your agency, you have yourselves rekindled, the inextinguishable faith of our heroic martyrs. Our Young Turks, our Babis, our new Brotherhoods, all our sects, under various forms, are inspired by the same idea; the same necessity of moving forward. Towards what end? Christian civilization? Never! Islam is the one great international family. All true believers are brothers. A community of feeling and of faith binds them in mutual affection. It is for the Caliph to facilitate these relations and to rally the Faithful under the sacerdotal standard.

Throughout the Ottoman Empire, particularly within the Balkans, and later Anatolia itself, attempted emancipation of the dhimmi peoples provoked violent, bloody responses against those “infidels” daring to claim equality with local Muslims. The massacres of the Bulgarians (in 1876) [59], and more extensive massacres of the Armenians (1894-96) [60], culminating in a frank jihad genocide against the Armenians during World War I [61], epitomize these trends. Enforced abrogation of the laws of dhimmitude required the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. This finally occurred after the Balkan Wars of independence, and during the European Mandate period following World War I.

[Gavur]

Conclusion

Erdogan's efforts to further re-Islamize Turkey are entirely consistent with a return to Turkey's Ottoman past as the heartland of an Empire established by jihad, and governed by the Shari'a. Indeed, both the current Erdogan administration, and the regime headed by the overtly pious Muslim Erbakan, a decade ago, reflect the advanced state of Islam's "sociopolitical reawakening" in Turkey since 1950-1960, when the Menderes government--pandering to Muslim religious sentiments for electoral support--re-established the dervish orders, and undertook an extensive campaign of mosque construction [62]. Despite Frank Gaffney's apparent failure to understand this continuum of related historical phenomena, I share his acute concerns. And ultimately, we agree that Turkey's bid to join the EU should be rejected.

By Dr. Andrew G. Bostom
American Thinker

Dr. Bostom is an Associate Professor of Medicine, and the author of the forthcoming The Legacy of Jihad, on Prometheus Books.

Notes

[1] Michael the Syrian, Chronique de Michel Le Syrien, Paris, 1899-1906, Vol. 3 p. 176, French translation by Jean-Baptiste Chabot; English translation in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, pp. 170-171.
[2] Michael the Syrian, Chronique, Vol. 3 p. 176; English translation in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1996, p. 55.
[3] See the numerous primary sources cited in each of: Dimitar Angelov, “Certains Aspects de la Conquete Des Peuples Balkaniques par les Turcs” Byzantinoslavica, 1956, Vol. 17, pp. 220-275. English translation in, A.G. Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2005, pp. 462-517; Apostolos E. Vacalopoulos. Origins of the Greek Nation- The Byzantine Period, 1204-1461. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1970.; Speros Vryonis. The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Elevemth through the Fifteenth Century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971 (Paperback, 1986).
[4] Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, p. 55-56.
[5] Paul Wittek. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire. London, The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1938 (reprinted 1966), p. 18.
[6] Speros Vryonis. “Nomadization and Islamization in Asia Minor” , Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol.29, 1975, p. 49.
[7] Vryonis, “Nomadization and Islamization in Asia Minor”, p. 49
[8] Paul Wittek. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire. London, p. 14. Wittek (also p. 14) includes this discussion, with a block quote from Ahmedi’s text,
The chapter Ahmedi devotes in his Iskender-name to the history of the Ottoman sultans, the ancestors of his protector Sulayman Tshelebi, son of Bayazid I, begins with an introduction in which the poet solemnly declares his intention of writing a Ghazawat-name, a book about the holy war of the Ghazis. He poses the question” “Why have the Ghazis appeared at last?” And he answers: “Because the best always comes at the end. Just as the definitive prophet Mohammed came after the others, just as the Koran came down from heaven after the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospels, so also the Ghazis appeared in the world at the last, “ those Ghazis the reign of whom is that of the Ottomans. The poet continues with this question: “Who is a Ghazi?”. And he explains: “A Ghazi is the instrument of the religion of Allah, a servant of God who purifies the earth from the filth of polytheism (remember that Islam regards the Trinity of the Christians as a polytheism); the Ghazi is the sword of God, he is the protector and refuge of the believers. If he becomes a martyr in the ways of God, do not believe that he has died- he lives in beatitude with Allah, he has eternal life”.
[9] Halil Inalcik. The Ottoman Empire-The Classical Age, 1300-1600, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973, p. 6.
[10] Vacalopoulos. Origins of the Greek Nation- The Byzantine Period, p.66.
[11] Speros Vryonis. “The Experience of Christians under Seljuk and Ottoman Domination, Eleventh to Sixteenth Century”, in Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990, p. 201
[12] Vacalopoulos. Origins of the Greek Nation- The Byzantine Period, pp. 61-62.
[13] Angelov, “Certains Aspects de la Conquete Des Peuples Balkaniques par les Turcs”, pp. 220-275; Vacalopoulos. Origins of the Greek Nation- The Byzantine Period, pp. 69-85.
[14] Vacalopoulos. Origins of the Greek Nation- The Byzantine Period, p. 77.
[15] Vacalopoulos. Origins of the Greek Nation- The Byzantine Period, p. 73.
[16] Angelov, “Certain Aspects de la Conquete Des Peuples Balkaniques par les Turcs”, pp. 236, 238-239
[17] Joseph Hacker, “Ottoman Policy Toward the Jews and Jewish Attitudes toward the Ottomans during the Fifteenth Century”, pp. 117-126, in, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman empire : the functioning of a plural society / edited by Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York : Holmes & Meier Publishers), 1982, p. 117.
[18] Hacker, “Ottoman Policy”, p. 120.
[19] Ivo Andric, The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, (1924 doctoral dissertation), English translation, Durham, North Carolina, 1990, Chaps. 2 and 3, pp. 16-38.
[20] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, pp. 23-24
[21] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, pp. 24-25
[22] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, p.78 note 2
[23] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, p. 25
[24] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, pp. 25-26
[25] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, pp. 26, 80 note 11
[26] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, pp. 26-27
[27] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, p. 30
[28] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, p.30
[29] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, pp. 30-31.
[30] Andric, Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule, p.38.
[31] Jovan Cvijic, La Peninsule Balkanique, Paris, 1918, p. 389; Translated excerpt in Bat Ye'or, Islam and Dhimmitude-Where Civilzations Collide, Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2001, p. 108.
[32] Paul Ricaut. The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches, Anno Christi 1678, London, 1679 (reprinted, New York, 1970), pp. 1-30.
[33] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, pp. 340-43, 351-402.
[34] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 342.
[35] Demetrios Constantelos. “The ‘Neomartyrs’ as Evidence for Methods and Motives Leading to Conversion and Martyrdom in the Ottoman Empire” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 1978, Vol. 23, p. 228.
[36] Constantelos. “The ‘Neomartyrs’ ”, pp. 217-218.
[37] Constantelos. “The ‘Neomartyrs’ ”, p. 226.
[38] Constantelos. “The ‘Neomartyrs’ ”, p. 227.
[39] Abdolonyme Ubicini, Lettres Sur La Turque, Vol. 2, Paris, 1854, p. 32; English translation in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity, p. 181
[40] A.E. Vacalopoulos. “Background and Causes of the Greek Revolution”, Neo-Hellenika, 1975, pp.54-55.
[41] Stanford Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2 Vols, Cambridge, 1976. See for example, Vol.1, pp. 19, 24.
[42] Bernard Lewis. What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 114-115.
[43] A.E. Vacalopoulos. The Greek Nation, 1453-1669, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1976, p.41; Vasiliki Papoulia, “The Impact of Devshirme on Greek Society”, in War and Society in East Central Europe, Editor-in-Chief, Bela K. Kiraly, 1982, Vol. II, pp. 561-562.
[44] Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, pp.190-191. Lewis also describes the devshirme solely as a form of social advancement for Balkan Christians in both the 1968 (p.5) and 2002 (also p. 5) editions of The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford University Press):
…the Balkan peoples had an enormous influence on the Ottoman ruling class. One of the most important channels was the devshirme, the levy of boys, by means of which countless Balkan Christians entered the military and political elites of the Empire.
[45] Speros Vryonis, Jr. “Seljuk Gulams and Ottoman Devshirmes”, Der Islam Vol. 41, 1965, pp. 245-247.
[46] Vasiliki Papoulia, “The Impact of Devshirme on Greek Society”, pp. 554-555.
[47] Vasiliki Papoulia, “The Impact of Devshirme on Greek Society”, p. 557.
[48] Oliver Warner, William Wilberforce and His Times, London, 1962.
[49] J.B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, Oxford, 1968, pp. 588-589.
[50] Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and The Slave Trade, London, 1949.
[51] Ehud Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, Princeton, New Jersey, 1982, p. 260.
[52] Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, Cambridge, 1957, p. 88
[53] Edouard Engelhardt, La Turquie et La Tanzimat, 2 Vols., 1882, Paris, Vol. p.111, Vol. 2 p. 171; English translation in, Bat Ye’or. Islam and Dhimmitude- Where Civilizations Collide, Fairleigh xxxxinson University Press, 2001, pp. 431-342.
[54] Reports from Her Majesty’s Consuls Relating to the Condition of the Christians in Turkey, 1867 volume, pp. 5,29. See also related other reports by various consuls and vice-consuls, in the 1860 vol., p.58; the 1867 vol, pp. 4,5,6,14,15; and the 1867 vol., part 2, p.3 [All cited in, Vahakn Dadrian. Chapter 2, “The Clash Between Democratic Norms and Theocratic Dogmas”, Warrant for Genocide, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Publishers, pp. 26-27, n. 4]; See also, extensive excerpts from these reports in, Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity, pp. 409-433.
[55] Excerpts from Bulwer’s report reproduced in, Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity, pp. 423-426
[56] Tudor Parfitt, The Jews of Palestine, Suffolk (UK), 1987, Boydell Press, pp. 168, 172-73.
[57] Roderick Davison. “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century” American Historical Review, Vol. 59, pp. 848, 855, 859, 864.
[58] Quoted in, Andre Servier. Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman, translated by A. S. Moss-Blundell, London, 1924, pp. 241-42.
[59] Januarius A. MacGahan. The Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. (reprinted) Geneva, 1976; Yono Mitev. The April Uprising and European Public Opinion, Sofia Press, 1978; Philip Shashko. “The Bulgarian massacres of 1876 reconsidered: reaction to the April uprising or premeditated attack?” Etudes Balkaniques, 1986, Vol. 22, pp. 18-25.
[60] Vahakn Dadrian. The History of the Armenian Genocide, Providence, Rhode Island: Bergahn Books, 1995, pp. 113-172.
[61] Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 219-234.
[62] Speros Vryonis, Jr. The Mechanism of Catastrophe-The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and The Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul, New York, Greekworks.com, 2005, p. 555.

[Gavur]

On the lighter side_Underwear styles expose Turkey's cultural clash

Oct. 7, 2005, 11:14PM



'White Turks' see newcomers as a threat to their European identity

By KARL VICK, Washington Post

ISTANBUL, TURKEY - The Turkish language has two words for underwear.

Kulot, pronounced like the word for pants-skirt, is actually French, and as
such, snugly captures the delicate sensibilities, urbane airs and consuming
aspirations of Turks who see themselves as Europeans.

Known as "white Turks," they have long held sway in this beautiful city that
stands half in Europe, half in Asia.

By bridging the two, Istanbul has defined cosmopolitanism for a millennium.

The working-class people following jobs and opportunities here from the
villages and smaller cities of the Anatolian peninsula are known as "black
Turks."

And when they pull off their trousers on a hot summer day at Istanbul's
public beach, the correct term for the white briefs they reveal,
unself-consciously, is don.

Underpants.

"We used to swim in our don," said Hasan Yildirim, 16, on the sand at
Caddebostan municipal beach, wet from a dip in the Marmara Sea. The white
cotton of his stretch undies peeked out from under a black nylon swimsuit -
in accord with a new city rule requiring that swimming be done in swimsuits.

"It was more fun in don."

No doubt it was, but the rules posted at the entrance to the beach were not
produced on a whim. Swimwear, or lack of it, fueled fierce controversy in
Istanbul this summer.

The underwear flap reflected class warfare and the country's political
realignment. And if some elements were unique to Turkey, others illustrated
the cultural dislocations that occur anywhere when much of a countryside
picks up and moves, creating a mega-city like Istanbul, 80 percent of whose
approximately 15 million residents were born somewhere simpler.

The flap appeared to begin with a screed that a columnist unleashed in the
July 27 issue of the newspaper Radikal.

Mine G. Kirikkanat, a very white Turk, began by writing about how proud she
was of Istanbul's shiny international airport, which "lights up Turkey's
'non-Arab' face."

But the drive into the city, she wrote, was something else. In the parks
along the shore road toward town, "men in their underwear rest ruminating,
women wearing black chadors or headscarves all are fanning the barbecue."

But while the men were branded as offensive for being undressed, their wives
were deemed unsuitable for wearing the long cloaks favored by religious
Muslim women.

Modern Turkey, though 99 percent Muslim, was founded in 1923 as a secular
republic, and was led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the dashing military hero
who conceived the nation-state from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

Ataturk embraced the French definition of secularism - not so much neutral
toward all faiths as antagonistic toward public expressions of the dominant
religion.

In Turkey, female government employees are forbidden to wear the head
scarves that, despite the official line, a majority of Turkish women wear,
some out of tradition, others for religious reasons.

Ataturk favored tuxedos, cigarettes and pinups of models in bikinis.

[Gavur]

Turkey is still most defendant country in ECHR

16 October 2005-FRANCE /STRASBOURG
Cihan News Agency-World
Despite fall in cases, Turkey is still most defendant country in ECHR
Turkey tops the list of countries that are sentenced to pay most compensation in the cases at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
ECHR conclude most of the cases, opened by the Turks due to anti-terror operations in nineties, against Turkey. However, the cases opened against Turkey at ECHR has gradually decreased in recent years thanks to recent EU-minded reforms adopted in Turkey to open the accession talks with the EU.

In most cases, Turkey is accused of violating life right and of torture.

Turkey was sentenced to pay 58 million Turkish liras ($45 million) compensation to the applicants.

Nearly one case in every two days was opened against Turkey.

Only 49 cases have ended in favor of Turkey in the history of ECHR.

ECHR authorities said that there was remarkable decrease in applications from Turkey against Turkish government especially on Article 2 and 3, the life right and torture respectively.

However, the authorities warn that the complaint on freedom of speech and of faith against Turkey were still high.