Gallipoli campaign and the Armenian Genocide

[Joseph]

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1846039.htm

[Joseph]

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1846039.htm

ABC Online, Australia
Feb 12 2007

Professor outlines Armenian connection to Gallipoli

PM - Monday, 12 February , 2007* 18:40:00
Reporter: Mark Colvin

MARK COLVIN: What links the first genocide of the 20th century with
the battle most often cited as defining the birth of Australia's
national identity?

The genocide was the Turkish massacre of the Armenians; the battle
was Gallipoli.

And what they have in common is that they both started on almost the
same day, within a few hundred kilometres of each other.

Why don't we know this as a nation? That's the question posed in an
essay by Robert Manne, Professor of Politics at LaTrobe University,
in this month's issue of the magazine The Monthly.

He's discovered that Australian historians have hardly noticed the
coincidence of the two events.

ROBERT MANNE: In 1915 the Ottoman Government began one of the first
really systematic genocides in history, certainly of the 20th
century.

And within a year or so, perhaps one million Armenians had been
killed because they were a Christian minority in the Muslim Ottoman
Empire, which was in its point of crisis.

And there'd been persecution for a long time, but this was not
persecution, it was the attempt to eliminate a people.

MARK COLVIN: And of course the Turkish Government throughout the 20th
century denied that this ever happened, and denial is still going on.
A journalist, Hrant Dink, was just murdered the other day for talking
about the Armenian genocide. To what extent has it been covered up in
history?

ROBERT MANNE: Well, I think two things; I think most people have a
vague awareness now because the Armenians have been absolutely
determined not to let it just fade out of history, but I don't think
it's as well known as it ought to be.

The Turkish Government has always utterly denied that a genocide took
place, although they admit that some massacres took place. But they
largely blame the Armenians for that saying they were a rebellious,
subversive element at a time of wartime crisis. But it's at the heart
of Turkish identity is to deny the meaning and the reality of that
genocide.

MARK COLVIN: And you say that Australian historians have effectively
ignored it, and that's despite a really close coincidence between the
genocide and a key event in Australian history.

ROBERT MANNE: That's right.

It seems to me the strangest thing. We have Anzac Day as April the
25th 1915 is remembered; the Armenians have April the 24th 1915 as
their day of mourning, which they take to be the beginning of the
genocide.

The two events not only coincided in territory and in time, but there
is quite a lot of evidence that the genocide was pushed on because of
the Dardanelle campaign of the Anglo-French forces in which the
Australians were involved.

So despite the fact that the things happened at the same time and in
the same place more or less, and they were even kind of connected
with a causal link, I looked through book after book about Gallipoli,
and there's no end of books that Australians have written about it,
and virtually none of them mention it for more than a passing
paragraphs or a couple of lines.

MARK COLVIN: What is the causal link? Tell us more about that.

ROBERT MANNE: Well, there are some contemporary historians, there's a
wonderful Turkish historian, Tanner Akcham, who think that when the
Gallipoli campaign began, or when the Dardanelles were first bombed
by the Anglo-French in March 1915, that was the final moment of
reckoning, and that the Turkish regime, which was run by two or three
young Turks were the dominant figures, they set upon and decided on a
systematic extermination of the Armenians, saying that at this moment
of crisis, where Constantinople might fall, we can't afford to have a
subversive minority within our country.

So, the Dardanelle campaign and the Gallipoli landings pushed on and
maybe not exactly caused, but at least triggered the final events
that led to the genocide.

MARK COLVIN: So why should Australian historians look more closely at
it? Because our national myth says that we weren't really the
strategic force behind the Dardanelle campaign, we were just the
pawns, we were just the people who were thrown into the breech.

ROBERT MANNE: Yes, my point is not so much that they should, although
I wish they had. My point is how strange it is that the event that's
really by far the most important historical event in the national
imaginary in Australia, which is the Gallipoli campaign, our
historians have never thought to ask the obvious questions about the
connection between the two events, or even to comment on the fact
that the two events took place at the same time.

Apart from the poet Les Murray, I've not come across an Australian
writer who's really thought imaginatively about the connection of the
two events in whatever they've written.

MARK COLVIN: And you think that's not likely to change? You say, "in
the Australian collectively memory of Gallipoli, the Armenian
genocide simply has no role, I suspect it never will".

ROBERT MANNE: Yes, that's what I think. That is because, as I say, I
don't think .

MARK COLVIN: Is that just your natural pessimism or do you think
historians are simply unlikely to heed your call?

ROBERT MANNE: It's not really pessimism in so much as to think that
history and collective memory are different things. And that
Gallipoli, this event that's so important to Australians has never
been an important event for historical reasons.

I think it was an important event at first because it was the point
at which the Australian nation felt it was a nation, which they
hadn't felt at federation, and where they felt they showed to the
British and the British Empire, the kind of manliness that they
possessed.

And I think always Gallipoli has been tied up with identity and
almost never been really connected to a kind of interest in the
history of the First World War, let alone an interest in the Ottoman
Empire.

And so it's not really pessimism so much as kind of trying to
identify the difference between history and myth, that I think it'll
never become a matter of great interest in Australia, except perhaps
for some intellectuals.

MARK COLVIN: But historians are supposed to be interested in facts
not national myths, aren't they?

ROBERT MANNE: Yes, but the historians that move time and again back
to Gallipoli, I think are driven by the interests of myth. Even if
they want to revise the story, what they're doing is revising the
myth. But they're not really interested in the kind of overall
historical questions that are connected to it.

MARK COLVIN: Robert Manne, whose essay on that subject is published
in this month's issue of the magazine The Monthly.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1846039.htm

[Steph]

My maternal Great Uncle, William Hadley, carried back a momento from Gallipoli which he kept all his life....a vivid red scar about 3/4" wide from his left temple down to his left hip, made by a turkish sabre.

[1.5 million]

I spent the better part of a day a number of years back at Gallipoli and its environs. We visited the museum there - which was nice - but small - spent time wandering along the beaches and at the bases of the cliffs, up on the heights, in the trenches and in the cemetaries reading gravestones...and of course reading the (as usual) poigniant words of Ataturk. I was driven to tears at a number of occasions considering the great sacrifice, heorism and bravery of all the Mehemets and Johnnys...and of course I was already fairly well read on the history and in fact possess a number of military reviews and manuals that detail the events of the months there. Likewise, and unlike the Aussies mentioned in the article I was aware of the vast trechary and evil being undertaken in Istanbul and from there to the rest of Anatolia. I understood what was at stake - the price of (allied) failure to prevail and take Constantinople and perhaps forstall the Young Turk's genocidal efforts. These thoughts, of course, made me all the sadder and more bitter.

[Gavur]

Bastard Churchill!

[Steph]

Bastard Churchill!

Very few people seem to be aware as to how BIG a BASTARD Churchill was.

Gallipoli for one, Royal Navy Warships in the Clyde, Mersey with guns pointed and primed at British cities. Tanks and troops on the streets of Manchester and Liverpool.
And of course, he was never elected to Prime Minister but selected and co-opted.
B*STARD.

[chinchilla]

The bastard did like Armenian cognac though.

[Steph]

The bastard did like Armenian cognac though.

Don't we all?!!!

[bell-the-cat]

Bastard Churchill!

And what the f***k do you know?

[bell-the-cat]

Very few people seem to be aware as to how BIG a BASTARD Churchill was.
.

See above posting.