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=> Sonyel's Ignorance...GENOCIDE KILLS

Sonyel's Ignorance...GENOCIDE KILLS
Posted by a2raya (Guest) - Monday, November 3 2003, 17:34:09 (EST)
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The essay I wrote disproving Sonyel's ignorant remarks and racist opinions...........




The Study of the Asia Minor Christian Genocide

“One is either for human life or not. There is no such thing as indifference on this issue”
– Israel W. Charny

As the world stood traumatized from the newly-brought news of the ghastly genocides committed by Imperialist Nazi Germany targeting the Jews and others in the European region during the years following 1933, the Ottoman Empire for decades had been silently and covertly successfully exterminating the entire Christian populous of Asia Minor parish-by-parish without any opposition or interference. The “turkification” and genocide of the vulnerable religious minority were at first condemned by many states and publicly denounced, but decades later the pages of history in contrast with two great world wars neglected the first genocide of the 20th century. The brutal cover-up and denial by the Turkish government has been the target by many human rights programs including numerous Armenian, Assyrian, and Hellenic Christian organizations. To uncover this gruesome and wicked episode is one that takes much detective work and dedication as the Turkish officials have invested millions upon millions in dissuading the world from knowing and identifying the cause and mastermind of the Asia Minor Christian Genocide.

To understand the analysis, obstacles, and claims of the concealed genocide inflicted upon over 5 million Christians, the necessity to be acquainted with the history and background of the episode is quite imperative. In 1914 within the Ottoman Empire, streams of the deported religious minorities that were led in deportation marches en route for their unknown and questioned fate had littered the ancestral lands of the once powerful Assyrians. The indigenous Assyrians, along with other Christian ethnicities, had lost more than half of their entirety as a result of the Turkish plot to purge their Christian existence in the Middle East (Amnesty International). The centrally planned and administration of the holocaust by the Turkish government subjected millions of Christians to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and eventual starvation. The fact was that the Young Turks (Committee of Union and Progress) represented the trend which was rapidly gaining the dominance in Turkish policy – Pan-Turkism (Armenian National Institute). The abhorrence of the non-Moslem and non-Turkish peoples in the regime provisioned the ambition to Turkify the whole region. The destruction and the subjugation of the religious minority had been planned and plotted and the implementation of the gruesome acts awaited for an ideal excuse, but plans were underway.

Unlike the Nazi Holocaust, the Christian Genocide of Asia Minor was initiated prior to World War I and ended much after the conclusion of the World War II. This atrocity was not only a technique to eradicate the Christian minority, but also as a source of force conversions to Islam. The outbreak of revolution within the Ottoman Empire targeting the absolutist rule of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II and the move for the suspension of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908 induced the Ottoman population. The backbone of the movement was formed by young military officers who were disenchanted by the decline of the Ottoman power and blamed the regime of the Sultan for not reviving the empire through Turkic expansion. The young military officers staging the revolution were dubbed as the Young Turks. Although under the oppressive eye of the Sultan’s secret police, the Young Turks successfully overturned the government and paved the grounds for an all exclusive and mono-ethnic empire. As the Sultan’s rule ended in 1909, the Young Turk movement quickly transformed into the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and began ruling the empire. Its members known as Ittihadists or Unionists adopted policies that “threatened the tattered fabric of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society” (United Nations Committee on Genocide). With political chaos amuck through the empire, the CUP capitalized on the citizens’ distraction and monopolized its power by bringing the parliament completely under its authority and influence (Turkish Denial). The deep-rooted alliance with Britain and France formed by the late Sultan were uprooted and a resilient alliance with Germany was established that gave German generals supervision and influence over the Turkish military. The CUP remunerated the years of retreat under the Sultan by implementing a policy of Pan-Turkism. This expansionist program adopted by the Young Turks was set to challenge the Russian and Iranian borders and display the superiority of the Turkish forces (Armenian National Institute). To unite the empire and implement the expansionist program intended to reclaim the alleged “Turkish lands” in the east, the CUP advised a secret policy to exterminate the Christians in the areas of the empire.

On November 11, 1914 the Turkish regime issued a proclamation of jihad against the Christian minority in the empire, signifying the first official declaration of genocide against the defenseless Christian populous. The summoning of a jihad is essentially the formation of a “holy war against non-Muslims sanctioned by the religious authority of an Islamic country” (Encarta Encyclopedia Online). According to the Armenian National Institute, the decree was announced over and over throughout the empire to isolate and antagonize the Christian minority and associate them with the Entente powers (Britain, France, and Russia), their enemies through their staunch alliance with Germany. With the declaration announced, the Turkish military under the authority and direction of Constantinople, instigated the repossession of “weapons, including all types of knives” from its Christian minority (The Forgotten Organization). This action of disarming the Christians from any brand of defense rendered them as an easy prey for massacre. This furthered the susceptibility of the Christian minority to genocide without the regime’s “fear” of an armed resistance. The basic rights of the Christians were stripped away and thousands of Armenian intellectuals were arrested and jailed without any reason. The public dehumanization of the Christians had begun with the regime’s initiation of displayed hangings of the empire’s Christian politicians and well-known minority leaders. Through this, the Young Turks publicly aroused suspicion and hatred by the civilian Turkish Muslims towards the persecuted religious minority, according to the Turkish Denial website. In a letter sent to the party’s delegates (Ittihad party), Talaat Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, informed that “the government shall give all necessary instructions to the governors of provinces and the commanders of the Army for the arrangements concerning massacres” exposed through the actual photocopy of this original memo (Boyajian 3). A similar message also was delivered that identified the true ambition of the new regime, “It is the duty of all of us to realize…our intention to wipe out of existence the known elements who have obstructed the political progress of our State for centuries” (Boyajian 4). The “known element” refers to the Christian minority within the empire. This depicts the deep hatred and vow of persecution for the Christians. With the dispatch from the Ittihad Central Committee (the ruling party in Turkey) “announcing the decision to exterminate the Armenians,” chete organizations were formed and ordered to mobilize near Christian-inhabited villages (Armenian National Institute). According to the Armenian National Institute, chete organizations were special factions comprised of villains and rogues utilized by the Turkish government to carry-out the commission of terrorizing and slaughtering of the Armenian and other Christian villages. With this, the fate of 5 million Christians fell in the hands of the Turkish assailants. The mass deportations and massacres of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire erupted and the unimaginable occurred—the liquidation and victimization of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians that numbered in the millions (Asia Minor Refugees Coordination Committee 5). Throughout the next few decades until the Allied victory in WWII, the Asia Minor Genocide, sporadicly, claimed more than three million Christian lives within the empire through direct massacres and torture and also in the course of indirect affects such as starvation and disease (The Forgotten Organization).

In the midst of the ethnic cleansing within the Ottoman Empire, thousands of fortunate Christian families fled the empire for their survival. This agonizing escape has been witnessed and engaged by both of my grandparents. Through their accounts, the stories and tales of the “forgotten genocide” vividly balloon to life and the hesitantly depicted scenes quickly engulf the mind’s eye to expose a bloodstained episode that no being should ever witness. At a young age of eight, my maternal grandfather, witnessed his father’s execution and countless other fellow Assyrians at the hands of the Turkish militia while fleeing to the Hakkari Mountains in North Iraq. He, his sister and mother had hastily grabbed the necessities needed for their undestined fate, while leaving his doomed father behind to “guard” the house. For many decades my grandfather kept silent of his past, shielding his children from the knowledge of the horror. Not wanting to share his tragedy with his family in order to not worry them and to also be able to “forget” and abandon this appalling and scarring period from his conscious. However through much pestering from me, my grandfather reluctantly decided to share his misery with me of the 1915 exodus. While fleeing from Turkey into the arduous mountains of Iraq, his mother out of lack of water, food and strength, was not able to sustain his four-year old sister. Settling on leaving her behind, my grandfather’s sister was left at the side of the dirt road with just a measly slice of bread. Knowing her destined fate, my grandfather’s mother was left with no choice but to press on with mounting exhaustion. Since the Kurdish inhabitants of the Hakkari Mountains collaborated with the Turks in the genocide, my grandfather’s mother was not able to rest or even sleep in fear of Kurdish reprisals, such as rape and murder. While fleeing into the darkness, his mother in awe and in helplessness observed the Kurds coming out of the mountains with swords and pitchforks and mercilessly falling into temporary rest spots of the fleeing Christians, and violently butchering all in sight, and surely not discriminating among the elderly, women and children. Through this, my grandfather bore unwanted witness of many Assyrians and Armenians not only falling victims to the Turkish militia but also to the barbaric Kurdish guerrillas. With the lack of sleep and incessant fear, my grandfather’s mother and my grandfather walked barefoot all day and all night to reach the British refuge in Mosul (British controlled city in Iraq). Finally, after her refuge sought, the permanent move from Turkey to Iraq husbandless and without any immediate family resulted with my grandfather and his mother to dwell in the refugee camp for years till she married again with, still, the looming threat from the Kurdish guerrillas.

On my father’s side, however, my grandfather was born in the midst of the genocide and exodus. His family, Armenian, and after heading warning escaped Turkey and headed towards Mosul, as well. Preceding my grandfather’s birth, his parents along with his two older brothers fled towards the British refuge. En route to the refugee camp in Iraq, the Turkish counterparts (Kurds) trailed closely to the fleeing Christians and either raped the women, slaughtered and/or robbed them. Amid the lack of water and food, my grandfather’s parents had no choice but satisfy the thirst and dehydration of their two young children with that of human urine. This was quite the common process practiced amongst the fleeing Christians as the barren mountains of North Iraq sustained scarce food and no water. To add to my grandfather’s tragedy, the family was resting one night, when Kurdish guerillas, at sword point, seized and kidnapped his two older brothers. Along with that loss and sorrow, the Kurds would also set up “mock” road blocks in turn to find young girls (usually between 10 to 15) to seize and rape while committing other atrocious exploits against the traumatized refugees. Once at the sanctuary of Mosul, my grandfather was born in the refugee camp without the festivity of his relatives or his two older brothers. After the full recovery of his mother they made the voyage towards Iran, where a large number of Armenians acquired asylum. While fleeing towards Iran, the dangers posed against Christians still remained high as the passage towards the safe-haven led through the Kurdish-controlled and inhabited Hakkari Mountains. With the loss of their two children and the massacre of their kin and relatives in Turkey, my grandfather’s parents reestablished their home in Iran and began their life in solitude after years of escape and the near annihilation of the Danavi family.

From these two vivid and daunting accounts one can only imagine the fear and ordeal experienced by the Christians at this time. Not only being attacked by Turkish militia but also by the Kurdish bandits in the mountains, their escape route to the British refuge. The Kurds supported the Turks to perpetrate the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes, with the promise of independence from Turkey (Assyrian International News Agency). Both of these malicious groups raped young ones, indiscriminately killed fleeing Christians, and kidnapped family members to add to the tribulation already imposed upon the genocide against the religious minority.
With such compelling evidence and numerous personal testimonies, how can the Turkish government commit such a crime, claim that the Asia Minor Christian Genocide was not and cannot even be considered a genocide, and deny any involvement with the deaths and loss of over 2 millions people?

To address the complications, firstly, the question that agitates every one of us, “why genocide.” This question has no answer, but however through its appalling aim the systematic destruction of a people is witnessed. Through jihad and other motives, the Christians of the empire were put under this inhumane and atrocious machine that nearly wiped out the existence of the religious minority. Though there is no definitive answer on the rationale of the Young Turks to perpetrate this aggression upon the innocents, there have been many theories both established by Turks and the victims, alike. According to one Turkish source, the Armenians and Greeks were seen as sympathizers for the Allied movement and “according to evidence, the Christian revolutionaries, were planning an uprising in Anatolia” that required military suppression which resulted in many “unwanted” deaths (Sonyel 3). However this theory can be proven true, but with the knowledge of the victimization of the Assyrians that are indigenous in the region and had made no prior attempts to ally with the Entente powers, why would they be military “suppressed” as well. The ridiculousness of the Turkish premise can be observed through these written and document accounts. According to Panayiotis Diamadis, a University of Sydney Professor, “The Assyrian Patriarch Mar Benyamin Shimun initially sought the protection of the Ottoman Government from Kurdish assaults in return for the neutrality of the Assyrian people, a people with a fierce warrior tradition.” From this acknowledged report that belittles the Turkish theory, the Assyrian leader not only was in jeopardy as a result of Kurdish aggression but offered a neutral stance towards the Ottoman stance in WWI. How can a nation in crisis and in security breach with Kurdish rebels be able to meticulously plan and plot an uprising against the Ottoman Empire? According to the Armenian National Institute, “Sahag, the Catholicos of Clicia, advises the Armenians of Zeitun not to resist under any conditions on March 14, 1915.” Sahag was the Armenian Church leader in 1914, without a state the Armenians saw their religious leaders as their political leaders. This document stating the Armenians to stay in solidarity with the Ottoman Empire even in the midst of genocide, depicts the non-violent quality of the Armenians that under the Turkish theory were allegedly a “threat” to the Ottoman Empire. The accusation that the Armenians were a threat to the stability of the Ottoman Empire is illogical and in which contains no concrete evidence. “The Armenians…were dispersed throughout the empire and did not think of independence or separatist aspirations, but, professing loyalty to the empire” (Hovannisian 21).

Refuting the Turkish theory, an Assyrian theory arose that was quite of significance. Referring to Colin Tatz’, Founder and Director of the Centre of Genocide Studies at Macquarie University, acclaimed framework of the “four building blocks of genocide”, Diamadis interpreted the Asia Minor Christian Genocide. According to Colin Tatz,
First there must exist an ancient hatred between the perpetrators and the victims. Secondly, there must exist the means and opportunity to execute the plan, usually but not always, under the cover of a war situation. Thirdly, the organizational and technological capability to execute the plan. Fourthly, the actual killings (Diamadis).

To remedy the first question of “why genocide,” the investigation of the first “building block” of genocide is vastly constructive. The hatred for the Christian minority is the first step to understand the exploitations. As Diamadis infers, the act of just being a “Christian in a predominantly Islamic society was seen as being a ‘giavour’ (infidels) by their Muslim Turkish overlords” (Assyrian International News Agency). That reason was enough for the organization of the massacres. Even Turkish intellectuals can concede to this statement as they legitimize the scrutiny of the Christians due to their public status of “a relatively prosperous minority in Turkey” (Sonyel 6). Many outsiders, such as British historian and statesman James Bryce, stated that “the Armenians constituted the most important element in the population [Ottoman Empire]. They are more numerous and wealthy than any single section of the Moslem inhabitants” (Dadrian 167). The small minority was also seen in many sectors of the government as well providing “the Ottoman empire with at least one Foreign Minister, seven other Ministers, and with numerous senators, deputies, ambassadors, judges and administrators” (Sonyel 6). However, the Young Turks, through their hatred for the Christian minorities, spread rumors about these affluent Christians that inferred that they were “spies” of foreign governments (Assyrian International News Agency). Coincidently, these “affluent” Christians were also the first to be targeted by the genocidal regime (Armenian National Institute). From these observations and the proclamation of jihad, many Turks “felt” the need to deport and annihilate the prosperous and affluent minority. Thus the ludicrous reason for the annihilation of the Christians.

Foremost, the Turkish government has repeatedly through acts of published governmental material and via Turkish intellectuals distorted reality and asserted that the killings do not amount to genocide (Turkish Denial). With some exceptions, there seems to be a convergence between the left and the right in Turkey today on the issue of genocide. Both political spheres use such terms as “sözde soykirim” (“so-called genocide”) to deny the genocide against the Armenians and display a crude nationalism (Balakian 192). Dismissing genocide, Dr. Salahi R. Sonyel insists that the “Armenian claims that about 1,500,000 Armenians were killed is neither convincing nor realistic” (Sonyel 2). However, a third party source, the French Yellow Book, derived from the census from the French Consul at Van (a heavily Armenian inhabited city in the Ottoman Empire), calculated the number of Armenian casualties and deaths to be at 1,500,000 when taking the pre-war and post-war Armenian populations in consideration. However, the complexity of this situation increases as this only suffices the Armenian casualties during the episode. According to the Hellenic Genocide organization, the only number that they can amount to is the overview that “millions of children, men and women were tortured and massacred or expelled from their home only for being Hellenes [Greeks].” As for the Assyrian victims, the Assyrian National News Agency reveals that upwards of 300,000 Christian Assyrians “perished in the years during the Great World War by the hands of the Turks and their Kurdish counterparts.” Analyzing the figures from these various sources, the systematic torture, massacre and ethnic cleansing of several million Christian citizens of the Ottoman Empire is a reality. However the question now lies upon the conception that did this suffice to genocide, as the Turks attribute the casualties and deaths to the quelling of civil unrest (Associated Press).

According to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, the international recognized authority on genocide, the Asia Minor Christian Genocide can be proved to be either a fluke as reported by Turkish sources or the actual 20th century’s first genocide as declared by Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians.

ARTICLE I: The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide whether committed in time of peace of in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and punish.
ARTICLE II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) killing members of the group;
(b)causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

With this utmost authority defining and clarifying genocide, the Asia Minor Genocide is straightforwardly a certainty. The multiple accounts from the genocide survivors, substantial pictorial reports, and the recent seizure of the Turkish governmental documents citing the command and authorization of such “massacres” cannot be dismissed and alludes to the classification of this gruesome period as a genocide, regardless of the petty reasons the Turks arise.

The Turkish denial and cover-up was the only way for corrupt regime to stay in power. Under the guise of deportation, the Turkish regime was able to exterminate the Christians without the world community’s awareness of the imminent human rights exploitation. Holocaust or Genocide denial is a hate crime of incomparable cruelty, as Professor Israel Charny has said, “killing the victim people twice—once with genocide and then again with denial” (Hovannisian 7). The precursor to the Jewish Holocaust, the Turkish genocide was joked about and not taken seriously. The branding of this genocide as an allegation as depicted by the Turkish intellectual Sonyel is not only discrimination but also a punishable crime. If any author or reporter infered that the Jewish Holocaust was an allegation against the Nazi government disputed by Jewish fanatics, there would be serious consequences that would comprise of apologies, firings and resignations of those organizations and outfits involved. Precisely why is the Asia Minor Christian Genocide treated any differently?

As Hitler once stated before invading Poland and ordering the massacre of its entire people, “Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians” (The Forgotten Organization). With this, we should never forget and always attempt to uncover unjustified crimes in our past. Through this we will be able to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing with education and enlightenment. Let us never forget Pastor Niemoeller’s epigraph to the holocaust.

First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
And I did not speak out—
Because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me—
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
(Hovannisian 3).



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