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On fascist peaceReader comment on item: Is Turkey's Government Starting a Muslim Reformation? Submitted by Ianus (Poland), May 29, 2008 at 15:18 sims01 wrote : "Firstly, regarding Armenians, the number is not actually 1.5 million but probably less than 1 million" Probably it's even higher. The victims were never counted and Taalat Pasha's order was clear : ""Kill every Armenian man, woman, and child without concern for anything". "still that is a horror of unimaginable proportions. I disagree that it was genocide in the legal sense though." A curious distinction between "a horror of unimaginable proportions" and non-"genocide in the legal sense", isn't it? Why, I say! This verbal trick is worth the best Nazi sophistry! Imagine Goebbels in his old age admitting the extermination of the Jews to be "a horror of unimaginable proportion" and yet "no genocide in the legal sense"! But the Nazis were not given this chance the turks have. They lost the war. The Turkish fascists won it and so we have this fine medieval casuistry! "Ottoman government at the time was trying to save itself from defeat at the hands of the Russians and tried to relocate the Armenians who sided with Russians." Another half-truth (=lie) just to save the "great" Turkishness and your narcissist super-ego! I am prone to believe the Armenian genocide originated by accident. When Enver Pasha moved into the Caucasus in early winter of 1914 he hoped to gain a swift and grand victory, push the Russians back away from the Turkish borders and march into the enemy's territories carrying on his banners the slogans of Pan-Turkism. What happened though was one of the most disastrous defeats in Turkish history. At Sarykamysh the 3rd Turkish army was virtually annihilated. Out of 90 000 soldiers that started the hopeful campaign less than 10 000 returned. Enver forbade to use the word Sarykamysh afterwards. Now not being able to defeat the Russians and incapable of criticizing great Turkishness or his own military incompetence, he found at once easy scapegoats - the Armenians. They saw the Turkish defeat with optimism and were on the side of the advancing Russians. They had learnt their bitter lesson of jihad and Turkish "tolerance". They had to pay for Turkey's gross failures though. The retreating Turks burned and devastated the Armenian villages on their way and soon in April 1915 these spontaneous acts of violence became the grand Turkish scheme - the indiscriminate extermination of all Armenians lock stock and barrel. "Granted, we are mostly responsible for what happened but an "intent to exterminate" was not there. At best they didn't and couldn't do enough to stop the killing of Armenians in the hands of local population and rogue troops (which as you probably know, were not Turkish)." If you mean the Kurds who used to swoop on the wretched marching Armenian columns like jackals killing, maiming and raping they were just tools in the Turkish hands. The Turks masterminded and executed the genocide plan. They are to blame in the first place and of course there was a clear intent to exterminate indiscriminately! Wow? A sweet myth of counter-genocide is being duly repeated... How many millions of Turks did they kill? Also a million? Wait! When asked by me a Turk once told me - "Three million!" ..."No, four million!"- another corrected him..." Even more!" - a third added... "As a final data point after we lost Balkans the refugees that were being driven away suffered equally as Armenians did, again not mention of that anywhere." Comapring apples and oranges. Were all those Moslems also indiscriminately massacred by the Christians rayas like the Armenians by their Moslem effendis? "To this day, there are Armenians living in Turkey AND Armenians from Armenia coming to Turkey for work (illegally)." There are today c. 70 000 Armenians in Turkey ... with an uncertain future. A miserable shadow of their once splendor. Their journalists are vilified and assassinated, plots are uderway to kill their patriach. The very word "Armenian" engenders in Turkey rage and fury as I witnessed many times. http://www.thearmeniablog.com/2007/03/turks-plotted-to-kill-armenian.html http://www.hellenicplanet.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=403 "You won't find any Turks or Azeris living in Armenia though, they were kicked out. Who is more tolerant again ?" How many Armenians will you find in Sumgait or Baku where the anti-Armenian pogroms were carried out in 1988 and 1990 respectively ? "As for the Greeks, show me a credible source that claims that a million Greeks were killed." Perhaps you live in a pre-literate age in Central Asia where the father of the Turks Ashina begets the Turkic race with his she-wolf. Here in Europe statistics as practical science was invented centuries, if not millenia, ago. Regular population censuses took place as early as the Roman Republic. Europeans introduced them in Ottoman Turkey as well. Furthermore, the archives of the Ecumenical patriarchate in Constantinople have been preserved and they are accurate enough as to the numbers of the Christians. Foreign scientists and governments were quite eager to collect the materials and elucidate the ethnic composition of the decaying Ottoman empire in view of its downfall and the new states to emerge on its ruins with their claims. Now where are these 622 810 Hellenes that lived in 1918 in the Villayet of Aidyn? What happened to those 353 570 Greeks from the Vilayet of Trapezountas? Have they fled to the moon to thank Allah for the excellent treatment at the hands of Kemalist hordes ? "If it was so why didn't Greece raise the issue at League of Nations. Why did they sign a friendship treaty only 10 years after we supposedly killed a million of their compatriots?" The League of Nations? As useless an institution as the US , if you may trust the development of the Cyprus issue where again the aggressors have been rewarded and the victims fooled! You Turks invade, loot, steal, rape and carry out a genocide and then ask "Why didn't Greece raise the issue at League of Nations?" Yet, why didn't Kemal wait with his massacres until oficially approved of by the League of Nations? "Our supposedly "jihadist" country fought together with two Christian empires in WWI." In October 1914 Turkey declared formal jihad on Russia and other Entente Powers with fatwas by the sheik-al-Islam, carrying around the banner and the coat of the Prophet and all other formal paraphernalia as required by Islam. "What is more Muslim Indians fought against us in Mesopotamia. Weird huh?" Not at all! The Arabs fought you too in the most holy places, didn't they? They were led by a British officer. In their eyes you were no Moslems at all. This is a well-known Islamic trick to circumvent the ban of fighting Moslems. So don't try to outwit me on that point ("Muslim Indians")! "It was not a war along religious lines , don't even try to paint it that way." Wasn't it? What did the son-inlaw of the Caliph (Enver Pasha) wait for was a jihad inside Russia after the Turks should enter the Caucasus. And what else did he later do in Central Asia before the Soviets killed him? "Mudros ceasefire allowed the entente to control strategic locations ONLY when their security were threatened, not when they pleased, not to partition mainland Anatolia or not to satisfy Greek nationalism. They were certainly not threatened when they invaded western, southern and southwestern Anatolia, and all of Thrace." Wrong! Allied troops were constantly harassed attacked by irregular troops. This was the reason to enlarge the original Greek zone to cover the British zone on the Dardanelles. Hence the Greeks were asked by Lloyd George to occupy Prussia. Don't forget this was a time of the bloody Turkish civil war - the Caliph's Army fighting bitterly Kemalists and general lawlessness from which partiuclarly non-Turks were suffering. "It was plain partitioning. Sevres likewise was never ratified by the Ottoman parliament, in fact it was rejected AND the parliament demanded the land, which is now Turkey to be the Turkish state. What did the "civilized powers" do? They shut down the parliament. You expect us to adhere to Sevres?" How do you mean? The Ottoman state was civilized and the West was uncivilized? Sevres was what Turkey deserved. Yet it in fact saved Kemal. Otherwise the Sultan would have captured and killed him as he intended to do. "The "never ending Turkish Jihad" brought us Lausanne, a peace that has been holding for over 80 years." "Peace"? Are you kidding, Turk? This has been a permanent covert jihad! In 1918 in Constantinople there were 364 459 Greeks. Now there are less than 1500! Imbros had 8125 Greeks now less than 270; Tenedos 3572 - now 30! As early as 1927 law 1151 prohibited any teaching of the Greek language in the schools. This is the sort of "peace" article 14 of the treaty of Laussane has brought ! And some more prominent stages of this Turkishly secular jihad on Hellenism in Turkey? In 1942 varlik vergisi(property tax of 156% of annual income !) and labour camps. 1955 the shameful state-organized pogroms in Constantinople where the proud Turkish "secularists" "destroyed 4,500 Greek homes, 3,500 shops and businesses, 90 churches and monasteries, 36 schools and 3 cemeteries. Two priests were burnt alive, 14 other Greeks killed, hundreds of Greek women raped and many thousands of Greeks beaten. The dead were not spared – corpses were disinterred and knifed and others defecated upon. The graves of the Patriarchs were defiled. The churches, in particular, suffered massive destruction, 70 being utterly destroyed". Fascist peace, wasn't it? Closing the Halki Theological School in 1971 to speed up the demise of teh patriarchate in view of the clause that only a Turkish citizen with qualified education in Turkey (=Halki Theological School) can hold the office...And innumerable daily chicaneries and sophistry to make life in Turkey impossible for the few remaining Greeks there. "I see that you chose not to answer my questions, which were not expedient for you, but I need to repeat them." These were in fact no genuine questions as questions are tools to find out the truth while you were looking for strategems, for insidious tricks to save the priori boastful Turkishness( a tissue of sweet lies) ...! Face the evidence and then ask genuine questions if you are able to approach the historical reality of what today's Turkey stands for in this world - the sinister and appropriate heir to the backward jihadist anti-European Ottoman empire! Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". << Previous Comment Next Comment >> Reader comments (428) on this item
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