Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts

24 April 2015

The Death March: Started 100 years ago today

As Aussies and Kiwis focus on ANZAC Day at present, it tends to overshadow an event, conventionally thought to have started today, a century ago, that is not as widely known as it should have been, not least because the land upon which it happened is, by and large, in complete denial of it.  The Governments of Australia and New Zealand, maintain this, presumably for convenience of trade with Turkey.  

That fact is an utter disgrace, and I give a rare credit to the Green Party for seeking to change this.

The Ottoman Empire was in trouble, the Great War, as it was then, was not going its way, and the Empire thought it had found one of the chief reasons, its scapegoat was the Armenians living in what is now Turkey, primarily because it saw Armenians as allied to Russia (which had often sided against discrimination and persecution of Armenians over previous centuries).  

There had been a history of periodic oppression of Armenians under Ottoman rule, as Armenians periodically rebelled against the inequality of treatment of the Ottoman state.  However, the catalyst for the events of a century ago came from the defeats of the Ottoman Empire in eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims fled from the Balkans to live in what is now Turkey, in what were predominantly Armenian areas.  These impoverished Muslims (who left many killed from war) were disenchanted by the relative comfort of the Armenian population, so a twin legacy of economic envy and "fifth column" fears emerged.  As Ottoman Muslims found it difficult to encourage Ottoman Armenians to turn against Armenians in Russia (which it was at war with), and there was genuine fear that Armenians would turn to fight with the Russians.

Armenian conscripts in the Ottoman army were demobilised, out of fear that they would switch sides. Their weapons were removed, and so it began.

Jevdet Bey, Governor of the Vilayet of Van, ordered 4000 Armenians to "volunteer" to defend the area from Russian attack, but the Armenians feared he would repeat his actions in villages of massacring Armenian men.  So they formed a self defence force, to protect a single square kilometre of the town of Algestan successfully.  On the night of the 23rd of April, the Ottoman Government rounded up 250 intellectuals and Armenian community leaders in Constantinople, and were moved to holding centres in Ankara, from where they were subsequently deported or executed.  In May, one of the triumvirate who ruled the Empire, Mehmed Talaat Pasha, ordered the deportation of Armenians.

Subsequently, Armenian property was confiscated, and hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forced at gunpoint, to leave their homes and businesses, and the towns and cities where they lived. Many were sent to march to Deir ez-Zor, in what is now Syria, crossing desert to get there.   Many starved or dehydrated in the process.  Some were shipped by rail, in a manner reminiscent to what the Nazis would replicate across Europe 25 years later. 

It was not just men of military age, but all men, women and children.  The soldiers had full carte-blanche to do as they saw fit, so in Damascus some would display women naked and sell them as chattels.  25 concentration camps had been set up to take the Armenians, where they were provided with woefully little rations in the way of food and virtually no medical attention. 

There are reports of villages being razed, with the inhabitants burned to death,  Estimates of the numbers killed range from the high hundreds of thousands to 1.5 million.  Raymond Ibrahim in The Commentator writes of the atrocities committed, saying they are not unsimilar to the actions of ISIS today, on some of the same territory.  

Turkey today denies that there was genocide, merely that Armenia collaborators with Russia were killed in war, and that the deportation wasn't forced killing, but that there was merely some starvation.  This continued obfuscation may reflect intense nationalistic pride, but it doesn't reflect evidence.  It is clear that, for a combination of historic bigotry and genuine military concern over allegiance, that the Ottoman's decided to remove Armenians from their country, not just without compensation, but in a manner than ensured many would die.

The continued denial by Turkey should shame its government, as it feeds into bigotry by some Turks against Armenians.  What's a further disgrace is that Barack Obama, even after campaigning about recognising the Armenian genocide, refuses to call it that as President. The continued obfuscation of the US President (if not Congress), and the governments of many countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and a more nuanced (gutless) position from the UK, and of course (just to show the humanity of Islam and its  opposition to Muslim led slaughter of non-Muslims) the only Muslim majority countries to recognise it are Lebanon and Syria.  

Some Armenians think that the commemoration of the events at Gallipoli are intended to take attention away from what happened to their ancestors.  I don't believe this is at all true for almost everyone who is involved in them, but it is important that we remember and note what happened.

Today, the country of Armenia is a small fraction of the territory that was Armenian dominated, and essentially represents the territory Russia won from the Ottoman Empire, minus that which it administratively carved up into other Soviet Socialist Republics.  Notably, a large Armenian enclave remains in Azerbaijan, where a sectarian conflict has periodically raged since independence of both countries.

The genocide of Armenians helped inspire the Holocaust.  It has also helped inspire Islamic State.  It is only right that today, we spend a moment to learn and remember what was done, because of their nationality and religion, to hundreds of thousands of innocent people.  It isn't about "shaming" Turkey.  It is about not forgetting when states wage the worst act any of them can do - to torture and slaughter there own people, for the crime of simply existing.


Starving child victims of the genocide of Armenians

17 September 2009

At 8ft 1 - world's tallest man wants a girlfriend

According to the BBC (which has video of him), they are usually scared of him. He's Turkish and 27. He grew so tall due to a pituitary tumour which has since been removed.

He has a specially made 3 metre long bed. Heaven help him flying, he'd never fit in economy class, business class would still mean folding legs, and so first class it is, at a crush.

"He said: "The good thing about being so tall is that I can see people from a long distance. The other thing is at home they use my height to change the light bulbs and hang the curtains, things like that.""

Which of course must drive him nuts, though in the USA I suspect many will think him suitable for basketball.

Of course he's not just tall, he has hands 10.8 inches long and feet 14.3 inches long as well. I suspect many women will be wondering about another dimension as well. Whether that is something that scares them is something else.

Good luck to him, I suspect he will want to be known for a bit more than his height, but sadly the article says nothing about what else he does.

04 May 2009

How Turkey put back membership of the EU

One of the more presumptious statements of President Obama in the past month has been to support Turkey's membership of the EU. An understandable position, but I suspect had George Bush said it, Europe would be seething with "imperialist" and damnation that the US was meddling in EU affairs. Given the USA is not a member of the EU, for it to openly express a view that it should accept a new member is rather rude at best.

However, the bigger issue itself has long been a debate between those who believe such membership would promote the acceptance of secular Turkey's modernisation, a predominantly Muslim country accepted into the European club, vs. those who fear the mass migration of Turks into the rest of the EU, swamping the state welfare, health, education and housing systems, and putting EU boundaries at Syria and Iraq, rather than Turkey as they are today. Besides 6 countries of eastern Europe, plus all of the former USSR (besides the Baltic states) remain out of the EU. A bigger case can be made for the integration of the former Yugoslav republics in the EU than Turkey.

Christopher Hitchens argues in Slate that Turkey itself has put its own case backwards by a long shot. It did this by:
- Opposing the PM of Denmark as a candidate for NATO Secretary General, because he refused to interfere with Danish newspapers publishing the famous "insulting to Islam" cartoons because he had no legal right to do so;
- Opposing the PM of Denmark as a candidate for NATO Secretary General, because he refused to shut down a Kurdish language satellite TV channel, accusing it of being sympathetic to terrorism.

Hitchens argues that these show Turkey is not willing to accept the values of the EU of free speech and tolerance, and with its continued discrimination against Kurds, and denial of the Armenian genocide of 90 years ago, Turkey has a fair way to go yet.

"Put it like this: Obama's "quiet diplomacy" has temporarily conciliated the Turks while perhaps permanently alienating the French and has made it more, rather than less, likely that the American goal of Turkish EU membership will now never be reached. And this is the administration that staked so much on the idea of renewing our credit on the other side of the Atlantic. This evidently can't be done by sweetness alone."