The slave hunters' state of the Crimean Tatars and a second disciple of Ataturk

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Mar 1, 2012 at 15:09

Mozere writes :

> after all this talk of turkish atrocities etc you can still see on a map ,after 500 years of Ottoman rule,the countries ,languages,cultures of Serbia,Bulgaria,Romania,Armenia,Albenia etc ,<

With the exception of Albania - which had a privileged position in the Ottoman Empire and which was forced by the great Powers to become independent of her master in 1913 for otherwise it would have been partitioned between Serbia and Greece, and in which after "independence" uprisings were started with the jihadist Turkish flags hoisted up and slogans "Back to Turkey" circulated - all the other nations mentioned had to go through ordeals of massacres, genocides, horrors and wars before they got rid of the Turkish nightmare. They regained freedom, retained language and culture not because but despite their Turkish oppressors. The Skull Tower of Nis, the Bulgarian horrors, the Armenian genocide and the Greek genocide are the bloody landmarks in the long struggle against the Moslem oppressors from Asia.

> but where are the countries of Crimean Tartars<

S. Herberstein, an ambassador from Emperor Charles V to Muscovy wrote about Mehmet Ghirey's slave-hunting expedition of 1521 "He took with him from Muscovy so great a multitude of captives as would scarcely be considered credible; they say the number exceeded eight hundred thousand, part of whom he sold in Kaffa to theTurks, and part he slew. The old and infirmed men, who will not fetch much at a sale, are given up to the Tatar youths, either to be stoned, or to be thrown into the sea, or to be killed by any sort of death they might please."

Mikhalon the Lithuanian wrote around 1550 in his book "De moribus Tatarorum Lituanorum et Moscorum" : "The Crimean Tatars have much more slaves than livestock. Therefore they supply them also to other lands. Many ships loaded with arms, clothes and horses came to them one after another from beyond the Pontus and from Asia, and left always from them with slaves. ……. So these plunderers always are in possession not only of slaves for trade with other people but also have slaves for their own estates and to satisfy at home their cruelty and waywardness. In fact we often find among these unfortunate people very strong men, who, if not castrated, are branded on the forehead or on the cheek, and are tormented by day at work and by night in dungeons."

The Crimean Khanate existed as a slave-hunting outpost of the Ottoman empire. Its whole economy was based on slave raids and slave trade. As one scholar points out in his work "The Crimean Tatars and their Russsian captive slaves" "From the beginning of the 16th century until the end of 17th century the Crimean Tatar raider bands made almost annual forays into agricultural Slavic lands searching for captives to sell as slaves... the slave trade was the most important basis for the Crimean Tatar economy in the 16th and 17th centuries. During these centuries, the Crimean Khanate remained the main supplier of Slavic slaves, almost all of which were captured in southern Poland or Muscovite Russia, and brought back to the Crimea by their raiders. Most of their raids seemed neither to have had any military purpose, nor politico-territorial ambitions. The taking of captives and the selling them as slaves for the Crimean Tatars was purely an "economic" activity. R. Hellie refers to the Crimean Tatar's raiding activities as their "industry":

Slave raiding into Muscovy reached crisis proportions after 1475, when the Ottomans took over the Black Sea slave trade from the Genoese and the Crimean began slave raiding as a major industry, especially between 1514 and 1654....The sale of slaves brought great profit to the Crimean raiders, because they were in great demand from the Ottoman Empire."

As long as the victims didn't learn how to defend their lives, their property and their families the slave hunters' system worked perfectly "well".

"The Crimean raiders have to hand over ten percent of their human booty to the government as a kind of custom tax at the frontier of the Crimean Khanate. Most captives were usually driven to Kaffa, the largest slave market of the Crimea under the direct administration of the Ottoman Empire, and were sold there to the slave merchants....Nearly seventy percent of the slaves sold in Kaffa were driven onto ships and dispatched to Istanbul... When they arrived, the Ottoman officials first examined the new "cargos" and chose the best slaves: the most beautiful women for the sultan's harem, the most handsome and the strongest men for his palace service. The remaining ones were purchased either by the government for navy, or by the slave merchants of Istanbul..."

It is estimated that c. 1 000 000 Poles were captured by the Tatar slave-hunters to be sold into Moslem slavery and a corresponding number of Russians. The problem of slave hunting was so acute and desperate for the Russian state that there existed a special "Ministry of Ransom" and a special permanent tax was collected to redeem Slavic slaves from the Tatar/Turkish captivity whose horrors are hard to imagine today for a civilized person that is rarely confronted with contemporary historical sources and grim realities.

But now with all the brutal reality of what the Crimean Khanate stood for, Mozere dares ask with a complaint and innocence of a wounded Moslem angel : "Why is there no Moslem slave-hunting state in the Crimea? Where are the slave hunters of Bakcisarai? Why are the once overcrowded slave markets of Kaffa empty? Why are no Polish,Russian and Lithuanian slaves drudging in the fields and tending herds of their Tatar masters? Why don't young Tatars learn cruelty by tormenting their defenseless Russian slaves, stoning the ill ones, cutting the noses and castrating the recalcitrant ones ? What a historical "injustice"! " Well, we should cherish no illusions as to the deep value system of the Turk, be his name Erdogan, Mozere or Ataturk !

> the Circassians<

What applies to the Tatars, applies also the Circassians. They lived also off banditry and kidnappings. The Bulgarian horrors started as the Circassian brigands that had fled to Turkey from Russia (the Russians tolerated no slave markets and kidnappings) were resettled to Bulgaria and started their normal "lifestyle" of slave hunters and parasitic sadists there. It provoked a rebellion that was drowned in Bulgarian blood but this brutality provoked Russia and even temporarily silenced the most faithful and devoted admirers of Turkey and Turkishness in Great Britain who could no longer deny the Turkish barbarity that was displaying its best "skills" under the eyes of the entire world !

> Pomaks of West Thracia,all exterminated, who cares they are only muslims. <

"All exterminated" ? ;) I wish you were right !

"In 1922 the Muslim minority in Thrace numbered 86,000 people. According to the latest general census (1991) it numbers approximately 98,000 to a total of 338,000 inhabitants of Thrace, i.e. 29% of the population. The minority is composed of three ethnic groups : 50% of the minority are of Turkish origin, 35% are Pomaks (an indigenous population that speaks a Slavic dialect and espoused Islam during Ottoman rule) and 15% are Roma. Each of these groups has its own spoken language and traditions. It was for this reason that the drafters of the Lausanne Treaty defined it as a religious minority...

It must also be mentioned that in Thrace and in the remote mountainous area in Xanthi where the Pomaks live, in particular, the State has set up and is financing the operation of Greek speaking secondary education schools (Gymnasiums) in which the teaching of the lesson of religion in the Turkish language and the teaching of the Koran in Arabic have been introduced."

Let's not that at the same time the Greek minority of Constantinople has been decimated and reduced from more than 130 000 in 1922 to 4000 as of now, its property confiscated , its schools closed ,its churches attacked, vandalized, its cemeteries desecrated , its members persecuted, killed and expelled all despite the Treaty of Lausanne's clauses guaranteeing protection for the Greek minority. The demise of the Greek minority in Constantinople as far as proportions are concerned strongly reminds of the disappearance of Jews from Poland between 1933-1945. In no vain did Hitler claim to be a second disciple of Ataturk.

>Religion and politics must not mix, it is so yesterday.<

Whatever you keep apart is meaningless as long as you don't keep truth and falsehood apart. ...

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