Propaganda vs the facts

Submitted by Bertan Atalay (Turkey), Nov 11, 2013 at 10:58

You fail to mention that the infamous Frederick Gustavus Burnaby in fact was at the service of her majesty actively spying on the Ottomans with the specific order to appraise and determine the balances and relationships of the eastern subject of the Ottoman Empire with their Turkish/mulsim communities. His work was suppose to lead to a coordinated effort to destabilise the Turks together with the results of the work of the equally infamous Lawrence of Arabia whose specific mandate was to pay Arabs to uprise against the Ottomans. These spies were the carriers of gold to the local communities to stir up trouble. There were equally terrific Russians and even American operatives carrying money and information to these communities. The general purpose was to destabilise the Turks so that the oil can freely be accessed by the western powers, in particular British and American, and, ofcourse, in the process grab land so that the Russians can be held at bay. Who can forget the BP refinary in Haifa, then the British mandate, was operating in 1923, refining crude piped in a pipeline, which defines the Syria, Jordan border today. This was already happening when the Turks were just starting their war against the western powers who were land grabbing like lotuses in todays Anatolia.

I also note that you (and of course FG Burnaby) conveniently ignore the founding of Dashnaks and Hashnaks, two viciously murderous Russian funded and corrdinated Armenian terrorist/militant organisations in the Ottoman east. These military establishments had been receiving funding from British (and through evangelical and anglican church organisations oprating in the same area belongin to the UK and USA churches). These Armenian organisations have been freely roaming the towns and cities of Ottoman east ethnically clensing the muslims/Turks from these towns in advance and in coordination with the Russians. It is interesting to note that while all these events were happening FG Burnaby did not mention any of these in his book!!! It appears today that these events lead to the heavy handed (and unacceptable) response by the Ottomans during the invasion of the eastern territories of Ottoman empire by the Russians. Again, FG Burnaby barely mentions this war where millions of Turkish muslims were parished in the hands of Russians and Armenian millitia and the Armenian community of the eastern Anatolia.

Today it is very easy and convenient for us to look back in historical events of the time and came to a conculsion based on, what is well known today, as state propoganda dressed up as academic journals. Almost all of the historical acounts of Lawrence and FG Burnaby have been discounted by the historians today as what they are: Publicity stunts by the governments to obtain votes to use military power to invade others' lands. Hitler famously called to generate "elbow room." Who can forget the, yet again, very infamous WDM that was suppose to be in Iraq reported by the face of the evangelical christianity Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Today we know there are no WMDs and the Iraqi war toll reached millions dead and the country split into two.

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