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TURKEY: ARMENIAN GHOSTS REFUSE TO GO AWAY
Analysis by Jacques N. Couvas
IPS, Italy
Oct 16 2007
ANKARA, Oct 16 (IPS) - The decision last week by the U.S. House
Committee on Foreign Relations to adopt a resolution recognising as
genocide the massive killings of Armenians in 1915 and 1916 by Ottoman
military forces in eastern Anatolia has marked a decisive turn in
the relationship between the legislative of the United States and
the Turkish government.
The sign has been on the wall for some time, as U.S. Armenians have
been trying for the last two decades to get an official condemnation
of Ottoman Turks for the atrocities perpetrated nine decades ago.
Armenians, a Christian minority community which together with the
Greeks and Jews formed the economic backbone of the Ottoman Empire
for many centuries, were from time to time subject to pogroms, often
encouraged by the state. Persecution became systematic towards the
end of the 19th century, and large-scale massacres took place in
1894-1896 and in 1909.
Following his defeat January 1915 by the Russians in a World War
I battle at Sarikemish, Ottoman minister of war Enver Pasha blamed
the Armenians for "fifth column" activities that had advantaged the
enemy. In that battle in the Caucasian plateau, 85 percent of the
100,000 strong Ottoman force perished, chiefly because of Pasha's
inexperience as military commander.
But it is also true that, as Russian forces were advancing into Turkey
from the East, Armenian factions had supported them, hoping to gain
independence for their ethnic group after the war.
In spring 1915, Enver and minister of interior Talaat Pasha rolled
out a programme to deter Armenian villages from collaborating with
the Allies. The Ottoman Empire fought World War I on the side of the
Germans and Austro-Hungarians.
On April 24 of that year, 250 Armenian intellectuals and community
leaders were rounded up, jailed and executed. In May, a deportation law
was passed, authorising massive displacements of Armenian populations
and confiscation of their property. Conscripts, serving in the Ottoman
army, were summarily dismissed and used as hamals, low-ranking manual
labour in worker battalions. Most of those who survived mistreatment
and famine were executed or disappeared.
Atrocities against Armenians in the countryside, particularly the
east, continued through the following year. Reports from the dozens
of British, German and U.S. consulates and missions spread throughout
Turkey at that time alerted the West about the violence taking place.
Henry Morgenthau Sr., U.S. ambassador to Constantinople, capital of the
Ottoman Empire, today's Istanbul, reported extensively to Washington
on the situation and pleaded to Enver and Talaat to use restraint,
to no avail. The United States remained neutral in the war until 1917.
Meanwhile, adventurer and author Gertrude Bell, on mission in the
region for the British intelligence services, persuaded the British
and their allies to protest to the Turkish government.
Morgenthau's and Bell's claims have been used by Western historians
to assess the extent of the massacre, and it seems they have been
corroborated by records of German diplomats and senior military staff
posted in the Middle East during the Great War.
According to Western historians, up to 1.5 million Armenians,
representing the majority of the ethnic group's population at the
time, were driven to a long march through Mesopotamia in extremely
harsh conditions.
A large number, the exact magnitude of which has never been
established, died. Survivors escaped to neighbouring countries and
to the West. Kurdish tribes, enrolled as special gendarmes by the
Ottomans, were at the forefront in raping, torturing and slaughtering
the deportees.
The Turkish version of the events differs widely from that of the
foreign historians and the descendants of the Armenian diaspora.
Ankara has consistently minimised the gravity and size of the events,
describing them as an "Armenian incident". The number of victims has
periodically been revised downwards now to around 300,000. Turkey
considers that this number is practically equal to that of Muslims
who died during the same period as a result of intercultural clashes
in that part of the country.
It is a fact that Armenians too stained their hands with enemy
blood during the 1918 riots at Baku in Azerbaijan, following earlier
massacres of Armenians by the Azeri population, which was allied to
the Turkish cause in World War I. Scholars of the Great War period
in the east tend to agree that the conflict brought out the worst of
human behaviour in all factions.
To minimise the damage to the image formed by international public
opinion, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has in recent years played
a realpolitik card, admitting that atrocities, even massacres, were
perpetrated under Ottoman rule, but that they were no longer relevant.
In a pre-emptive move, following repeated attempts in 2000 and 2005
by the U.S. Congress to pass a resolution using the term genocide,
it has proposed that a mixed panel of Turkish and international
academics search official records and jointly present their findings.
"It is a matter for historians, not politicians," is the official view.
Foreign historians have not been forthcoming, as it is known that
the Ottoman administration was frugal in keeping meaningful records
of population displacements or measures affecting religious minorities.
The U.S. has been hesitant over the past 90 years to take a firm
position on the issue. Forty of the states in the U.S. have already
passed legislation or proclamations qualifying the events as genocide,
but only two presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, have used
this term in public. All U.S. presidents, including now George Bush,
have, however, used the Armenian-proposed figure of 1.5 million as
the toll in victims.
Twenty countries and transnational organisations, including the
European Parliament and the European Council, have acknowledged
the genocide. The term was coined in 1943 by Prof. Raphael Lemkin,
who was motivated by the slaughters of Assyrians by Iraqis in 1933,
the Armenian massacres of World War I, and the Nazi extermination of
European Jews during World War II.
Retaliation by the Turkish government has been selective. Canadian
and Italian companies enjoy good business from the public sector,
although their respective countries have recognised the genocide.
France and Switzerland, on the other hand, have frequently been
excluded from such dealings because of their parliaments' decisions
on the subject.
In 2006, French products were boycotted after legislators passed a law
forbidding denial of the Armenian genocide. France hosts the second
largest Armenian community after the U.S. It is estimated that there
are eight to 10 million Armenians living outside of their country.
At the same time, reference to the Armenian genocide in Turkey is
taboo, and can lead to legal prosecution. Nobel Prize novelist Orhan
Pamuk and editor-in-chief Hrank Dink were brought to trial and faced
jail sentences for doing so. The latter was shot dead last year by
a Turkish nationalist.
The World War I killings encouraged the Allies to grant Armenians
their own land in 1918. The young Democratic Republic of Armenia
(DRA) had a short existence. Turkish troops invaded a large part of
the country in 1920, but a swift attack by the Bolsheviks from Russia
threw them back. In 1922 the DRA joined the Soviet Union until 1991,
when it recovered its independence from Moscow.
Armenia staged a protracted war against the Azeris in the 1990s and
occupied the Nagorno Karabakh province, home to 150,000 Armenians. In
retaliation Turkey closed its border with Armenia, a diplomatic status
still in effect. Isolation from its western flank has, however, not
affected Armenian trade. The country's gross domestic product per
capita is 4,250 dollars, behind Turkey's (5,400 dollars) but not all
that bad by regional standards.
It is estimated that 40,000 to 70,000 Armenians live in Turkey today.
Many are clandestine workers. Proposals by Turkish politicians after
the U.S. House Committee resolution include expelling such individuals.
It seems that in the Middle East region old ghosts neither die nor
fade away.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=3966 8
Analysis by Jacques N. Couvas
IPS, Italy
Oct 16 2007
ANKARA, Oct 16 (IPS) - The decision last week by the U.S. House
Committee on Foreign Relations to adopt a resolution recognising as
genocide the massive killings of Armenians in 1915 and 1916 by Ottoman
military forces in eastern Anatolia has marked a decisive turn in
the relationship between the legislative of the United States and
the Turkish government.
The sign has been on the wall for some time, as U.S. Armenians have
been trying for the last two decades to get an official condemnation
of Ottoman Turks for the atrocities perpetrated nine decades ago.
Armenians, a Christian minority community which together with the
Greeks and Jews formed the economic backbone of the Ottoman Empire
for many centuries, were from time to time subject to pogroms, often
encouraged by the state. Persecution became systematic towards the
end of the 19th century, and large-scale massacres took place in
1894-1896 and in 1909.
Following his defeat January 1915 by the Russians in a World War
I battle at Sarikemish, Ottoman minister of war Enver Pasha blamed
the Armenians for "fifth column" activities that had advantaged the
enemy. In that battle in the Caucasian plateau, 85 percent of the
100,000 strong Ottoman force perished, chiefly because of Pasha's
inexperience as military commander.
But it is also true that, as Russian forces were advancing into Turkey
from the East, Armenian factions had supported them, hoping to gain
independence for their ethnic group after the war.
In spring 1915, Enver and minister of interior Talaat Pasha rolled
out a programme to deter Armenian villages from collaborating with
the Allies. The Ottoman Empire fought World War I on the side of the
Germans and Austro-Hungarians.
On April 24 of that year, 250 Armenian intellectuals and community
leaders were rounded up, jailed and executed. In May, a deportation law
was passed, authorising massive displacements of Armenian populations
and confiscation of their property. Conscripts, serving in the Ottoman
army, were summarily dismissed and used as hamals, low-ranking manual
labour in worker battalions. Most of those who survived mistreatment
and famine were executed or disappeared.
Atrocities against Armenians in the countryside, particularly the
east, continued through the following year. Reports from the dozens
of British, German and U.S. consulates and missions spread throughout
Turkey at that time alerted the West about the violence taking place.
Henry Morgenthau Sr., U.S. ambassador to Constantinople, capital of the
Ottoman Empire, today's Istanbul, reported extensively to Washington
on the situation and pleaded to Enver and Talaat to use restraint,
to no avail. The United States remained neutral in the war until 1917.
Meanwhile, adventurer and author Gertrude Bell, on mission in the
region for the British intelligence services, persuaded the British
and their allies to protest to the Turkish government.
Morgenthau's and Bell's claims have been used by Western historians
to assess the extent of the massacre, and it seems they have been
corroborated by records of German diplomats and senior military staff
posted in the Middle East during the Great War.
According to Western historians, up to 1.5 million Armenians,
representing the majority of the ethnic group's population at the
time, were driven to a long march through Mesopotamia in extremely
harsh conditions.
A large number, the exact magnitude of which has never been
established, died. Survivors escaped to neighbouring countries and
to the West. Kurdish tribes, enrolled as special gendarmes by the
Ottomans, were at the forefront in raping, torturing and slaughtering
the deportees.
The Turkish version of the events differs widely from that of the
foreign historians and the descendants of the Armenian diaspora.
Ankara has consistently minimised the gravity and size of the events,
describing them as an "Armenian incident". The number of victims has
periodically been revised downwards now to around 300,000. Turkey
considers that this number is practically equal to that of Muslims
who died during the same period as a result of intercultural clashes
in that part of the country.
It is a fact that Armenians too stained their hands with enemy
blood during the 1918 riots at Baku in Azerbaijan, following earlier
massacres of Armenians by the Azeri population, which was allied to
the Turkish cause in World War I. Scholars of the Great War period
in the east tend to agree that the conflict brought out the worst of
human behaviour in all factions.
To minimise the damage to the image formed by international public
opinion, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has in recent years played
a realpolitik card, admitting that atrocities, even massacres, were
perpetrated under Ottoman rule, but that they were no longer relevant.
In a pre-emptive move, following repeated attempts in 2000 and 2005
by the U.S. Congress to pass a resolution using the term genocide,
it has proposed that a mixed panel of Turkish and international
academics search official records and jointly present their findings.
"It is a matter for historians, not politicians," is the official view.
Foreign historians have not been forthcoming, as it is known that
the Ottoman administration was frugal in keeping meaningful records
of population displacements or measures affecting religious minorities.
The U.S. has been hesitant over the past 90 years to take a firm
position on the issue. Forty of the states in the U.S. have already
passed legislation or proclamations qualifying the events as genocide,
but only two presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, have used
this term in public. All U.S. presidents, including now George Bush,
have, however, used the Armenian-proposed figure of 1.5 million as
the toll in victims.
Twenty countries and transnational organisations, including the
European Parliament and the European Council, have acknowledged
the genocide. The term was coined in 1943 by Prof. Raphael Lemkin,
who was motivated by the slaughters of Assyrians by Iraqis in 1933,
the Armenian massacres of World War I, and the Nazi extermination of
European Jews during World War II.
Retaliation by the Turkish government has been selective. Canadian
and Italian companies enjoy good business from the public sector,
although their respective countries have recognised the genocide.
France and Switzerland, on the other hand, have frequently been
excluded from such dealings because of their parliaments' decisions
on the subject.
In 2006, French products were boycotted after legislators passed a law
forbidding denial of the Armenian genocide. France hosts the second
largest Armenian community after the U.S. It is estimated that there
are eight to 10 million Armenians living outside of their country.
At the same time, reference to the Armenian genocide in Turkey is
taboo, and can lead to legal prosecution. Nobel Prize novelist Orhan
Pamuk and editor-in-chief Hrank Dink were brought to trial and faced
jail sentences for doing so. The latter was shot dead last year by
a Turkish nationalist.
The World War I killings encouraged the Allies to grant Armenians
their own land in 1918. The young Democratic Republic of Armenia
(DRA) had a short existence. Turkish troops invaded a large part of
the country in 1920, but a swift attack by the Bolsheviks from Russia
threw them back. In 1922 the DRA joined the Soviet Union until 1991,
when it recovered its independence from Moscow.
Armenia staged a protracted war against the Azeris in the 1990s and
occupied the Nagorno Karabakh province, home to 150,000 Armenians. In
retaliation Turkey closed its border with Armenia, a diplomatic status
still in effect. Isolation from its western flank has, however, not
affected Armenian trade. The country's gross domestic product per
capita is 4,250 dollars, behind Turkey's (5,400 dollars) but not all
that bad by regional standards.
It is estimated that 40,000 to 70,000 Armenians live in Turkey today.
Many are clandestine workers. Proposals by Turkish politicians after
the U.S. House Committee resolution include expelling such individuals.
It seems that in the Middle East region old ghosts neither die nor
fade away.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=3966 8