A Window on Anatolia 1876

Submitted by Mozere (United Kingdom), Nov 13, 2013 at 12:12

Mr Atalay you missed my point in my last post,it was a reply to Mr Ceviks comment that religion vanishing within our lifetime.I merely pointed out Officer FG Barnaby as a witness to the then Governor of Ankara's unfulfilled prophecy in 1876 that in a 100 years time religion will disappear and that the Armenians were loyal to the Sultan.Mr Barnaby's politics were not relevent to these staments.

Since you mention his politics I think it is a bit of a stretch to equate him to Lawrence of Arabia, Barnaby was never in disguise,he always said openly that he was a british officer he inspected the fortifications with the ottoman officers present and his suggestions were eagerly sought in view of the approaching war.I do not believe you read the whole book, if you did you would have seen he was pro-Turkish as he describes the recent refugees from the Russian atrocities in the Crimea and the Caucusus in Circassian and Tartar villages.He also documents in an annexe to his book the atrocities the Balkan Muslims suffered ,to counter the propoganda by Gladstone.

Also your mention of petrol politics is irrelevant for the period 1870s as there were no cars then and the battleships had to wait till 1910s for their steam to be produced by petrolium products.

I resent that you are showing a symphatiser of the Ottomans against the Russian invaders as a gold distributing spy without any evidence just a conjecture that he is British and he is an officer and thus he must be up to no good whatever he does.

Another point; Armenian dashnaks and hunchaks were not active till 1890 a full 14 years after FG Barnaby left east Anatolia.

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