Intellectual janissaries

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jun 27, 2012 at 18:19

gerard wrote:

> You may argue over the semantics but the Treaty of Sevres was imposed against the will of the majority of the Ottoman people, who considered Greek Troops garrisoning Izmir as occupation and Greek Soldiers burning villages and towns through their scorched earth policy as acts of war.<

First, it's always worthwhile to clarify meanings when dealing with Moslems who routinely attach quite different connotations to seemingly same sounding words and never suspect that someone may check what they are saying.

Second, it's up to you to prove that the Greeks were not an Entente power acting in accordance and as plenipotentiaries of the Entente and that there is any formal or material mistake in my account.

Third, Turkey lost a war which it had started by bombing Russian Black Sea ports and by declaring jihad on the Entente. It started it hoping to incorporate vast territories in the Balkans, The Caucasus and Central Asia. Now Allah made Turkey lose the war. The treaty of Sevres was the outcome and punishment for Turkey's deliberate policy of aggression which the legitimate government in Constantinople acknowledged. That the Turks were not happy with the punishment is according to you a proof there should be no punishment.Ye?The Armenian or Greek genocide can't be prosecuted because it is against the will of the Turkish majority? It's what you want to say, isn't it?

Fourth, the occupation of Turkey was foreseen and implemented according to the Armistice of mudros to make sure Turkey meets the obligations it had taken upon. Turkey was occupied by other Entente Powers like Italy, France, Britain. The original Greek zone of occupation was widened on the request of Britain. It's up to you to question the validity of the Mudros Armistice agreement too. After losing the war Turkey had provoked it should have been rewarded with new territorial acquisitions and Christian-free provinces, shouldn't it ?

As to "Greek Soldiers burning villages and towns through their scorched earth policy as acts of war",I can tell you that soon before the destruction of Smyrna by Kemal's jihadists in 1922, the US turned to Kemal with a formal request to form an independent commission of inquiry to find out what villages were exactly meant and what had happened there. Kemal gave no answer but instead ordered to burn down Smyrna and exterminate its Christian population. Typically Turkish perfidy, isn't it?

Let me also quote George Horton, the US consul to Smyrna

" ONE of the cleverest statements circulated by the Turkish propagandists is to the effect that the massacred Christians were as bad as their executioners, that it was "50-50." This especially appeals strongly to the Anglo-Saxon sense of justice, relieves one of all further annoyance or responsibility, and quiets the conscience. But it requires a very thoughtless person indeed to accept such a statement, and extremely little thought required to show the fallacy of it.

In the first place, the Christians in the power of the Turk have never had much opportunity to massacre, even had they been so disposed. If a few Turks have been killed in the long history of butcheries that have soaked the empire with blood, the reckoning, mathematically, will not be 50-50, nor even one to ten thousand. In addition to this, even with the shortcomings of the Christians of the world, in general, the teachings of Christ have made it better. In all the former Ottoman provinces that have succeeded in casting off the Turkish blight—Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece—there is very little, if any, record of Turks massacred by Christians.

The conduct of the Greeks toward the thousands of Turks residing in Greece, while the ferocious massacres were going on, and while Smyrna was being burned and refugees, wounded, outraged and ruined, were pouring into every port of Hellas, was one of the most inspiring and beautiful chapters in all that country's history. There were no reprisals. The Turks living in Greece were in no wise molested, nor did any storm of hatred or revenge burst upon their heads. This is a great and beautiful victory that, in its own way, rises to the level of Marathon and Salamis.

One naturally asks what other Christian nation could have done any better? In fact, the whole conduct of Greece, during and after the persecution of the Christians in Turkey, has been most admirable, as witness also its treatment of the Turkish prisoners of war, and its efforts for the thousands of refugees that have been thrown upon its soil. I know of what I am speaking, for I was in Greece and saw with my own eyes. No one, I think, will have the courage to dispute these facts.

Had the Greeks, after the massacres in the Pontus and at Smyrna, massacred all the Turks in Greece, the record would have been 50-50—almost."

"Had the Greeks won on the banks of the Sangarios the Turks would have never been deprived of their beloved sultan and caliph."

> Sultan Vahdettin was seen as a traitor for capitulating to Entente, I would imagine that confidence in the Caliphate was at an all time low. The British even recruited a pro-Caliphate army from amongst the Turks but they were far outnumbered by the Turks who joined Kemal.<

And it was also a British that wrote the death fatwa against Kemal in 1919 and not the caliph and his sheikh ul-Islam? Have you ever heard what the Caliph's Army was and how Kemal's envoys were received in Konya and elsewhere? And one general note how can you imagine a Turk and Moslem being recruited to the Caliph's Army by the British kafirs?

"That you can faithfully repeat the official Turkish propaganda is reassuring, but that you are unable to look at it critically isn't. Are you one of these newly Turkified Germans grown up in a Turkish neighborhood, spending holidays in Izmit , listening to Turkish fairy tales at your local kebab seller and converting to Islam and Kemalism later in life ?"

>Contrary to your ad hominem attacks, I am not a Turk or German, or even a Turkified German, I simply wish to approach history objectively.<

Well, whatever you are that you're an intellectual janissary is as clear as that you identify history with the official Turkish version of it. How can you "approach history objectively" by naively repeating a posteriori Turkish propaganda and lies?

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