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Armenian Genocide Contemporary Articles


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#41 Ashot

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Posted 11 April 2008 - 02:01 AM

ARMENIANS' HEROIC STAND IN MOUNTAINS
Men, women, and Children Fought with Knives, Scythes, and Stones
Women Who Had Plunged Knives Into Turks Afterward Killed Themselves---Bryce Gets Report


SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1915

LONDON, Nov. 26.--Viscount Bryce tonight made public the details of further Armenian massacres, which, in a letter accompanying them, he says, "surpass in horror, if that were possible, what has been published already."

"I feel," his letter continues, "that such crimes ought to be exposed to the utmost, and that the charity of other nations will more than ever be drawn to the unhappy refugees when it is known what their friends and fellow-countrymen have suffered."

Describing a last stand of Armenian in the hill country of Samsun, a report received by Lord Bryce says:

"The surviving warriors found themselves surrounded at close quarters by 30,000 Turks and Kurds. Then followed one of those desperate, heroic struggles for life which have always been the pride of the mountaineers. Men, women, and Children fought with knives, scythes, and stones, and anything else they could handle. They rolled blocks of stone down the steep slopes, killing many of their enemies. In the frightful hand-to -hand combats women were seen thrusting their knives into the throats of Turks.

"When every warrior had fallen, several of the younger women who were in danger of falling into the hands of the Turks threw themselves from the rocks, some of them with infants in their arms."

Lord Bryce's Letter

Lord Bryce says the details confirm and amplify the ghastly history of deportations by which Armenians in Northern and Eastern Anatolia were driven to a death of fiendish cruelty. The first part of the evidence, he says, was received by the Committee of Inquiry in the United States, and the second part comes from an Armenian gentleman at Tiflis, who received it from refugees who escaped from regions where the events happened.

"The sufferings of the peasants and the mountaineers in the regions of Van, Mush, and Samsun," Lord Bryce says, "seem to have been even more terrible than were those of the peaceful town folk described in Part I of the report. Every successive piece of evidence increases the horror of the story and confirmes the dreadful certainly of its truth.

"These atrocities were not produced by imagination. Many of them are vouched for by several coincident testimonies. They all are in keeping, and the evidence is most complete, and some of it most terrible. At this present phase of events the civilized world is powerless to intervene, but we must bear these unspeakable crimes in constant memory against the day of reckoning."

THE NEW EVIDENCE

After giving the parts of the evidence received from the United States, Lord Bryce says that the following extracts were taken from his correspondent at Tiflis:

"Toward the end of May Djevdet Bey, the Military Governor, was expelled from Van. Djevdet fled southward and entered Sairt with some 8,000 soldiers, whom he called 'Butcher Battalions. He massacred most of the Christians of Sairt, as to the details of which nothing is known. On the best of authority, however it is reported that he ordered his soldiers to burn in the public squares the Armenian Bishop, Eglise Vartaved, and the Chaldean Bishop, Addai Sher.

"On June 25 the Turks surrounded the Town of Bitlis and cut its communications with neighboring Armenian villagers. Then most of the able-bodied men were taken away from their women by domiciliary visits. During the following few days all the men under arrest were shot outside the town and buried in deep trenches dug by the victims themselves. The young women and children were distributed among the rabble. The remainder, the useless lot were driven to the south and are believed to have been drowned in the Tigris.

"Any attempts at resistance, however brave, were quelled by the regular troops. Many Armenians, after firing their last cartridge, either took poison by whole families or killed themselves in their homes in order not to fall into the hands of the Turks.

Armenians Tortured to Death.

It is such a fashion that the Turks disposed of about fifteen thousand Armenians at Bitlis. At Mush early in July the authorities demanded arms from the Armenians and a large sum in ransom of notables of the town. The head men of the village were subjected to revolting tortures. Their finger nails and then their toe nails were forcibly extracted; teeth were knocked out, and in some cases noses were whittled down the victims thus being done to death under shocking, lingering agony.

"The female relatives of victims who came to the rescue were assaulted in public before the very eyes of their mutilated men. The shrieks and death cries of the victims filled the air, yet they did not move the Turkish beast.

"In the Town of Mush itself the Armenians, under the leadership Gotoyan and others, entrenched themselves in churches and stone-built houses and fought for four days in self-defense, but Turkish artillery, manned by German officers, made short work of all the Armenian positions, and all the Armenian leaders, as well as their men were killed in the fighting.

"When they were dead and silence reigned over the ruins of the churches and houses the rest of the Moslem rabble descended upon the women and children and drove them out of town and into large camps, which already had been prepared for the peasant women and children.

Women and Children Burned

"The ghastly scenes which followed may seem incredible, yet these reports have been confirmed beyond all doubt. The shortest means employed for disposing of the women and children in the various camps was by burning. Fire was set to the large wooden sheds in Alijan, Mograkom, Khasjogh, and other Armenian Villages, and these absolutely helpless women and children were roasted to death.

"Many women went mad and threw away their children. Some women knelt down and prayed amid the flames which were burning their bodies. Others shrieked for help, which came from nowhere, and the executioners, who seemed unmoved by this unparalleled savagery, grasped infants by one leg and hurried them into the fire, calling out to the burning mothers. Here are your lions.

"Turkish prisoners who apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at remembering the sight. The odor of burning flesh, they say, permeated the air for many days."


New York Times


#42 Ashot

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Posted 11 April 2008 - 02:03 AM

POPE MAY MAKE NEW PLEA TO KAISER


December 9, 1915

T. P. O'Connor Hears He Will Be Asked to Take Action to Save the Armenians

BRITISH COMMITTEE ACTIVE

Resolves to Work On Despite the Terrible Events That Have Stopped its Work for Armenia.

London, Nov 20 -- T. P. O'Connor is well known, among his other activities, as one of the veteran friends of the Armenians, and he today dictated a statement in reference to the recent massacres and the debate in the House of Commons. He says:

"If it were not for the quarter of a million of refugees that have to be helped, housed, and fed, and if I were to yield to a mood, I would feel almost too full of despair about Armenia to say one other word on the subject."

"Three or four years ago, when it seemed possible to raise the Armenian question again, I joined with others in forming an Armenian Committee; and for a couple of years everything seemed to be going in our favor."

"After negotiations of two years we at last succeeded in drafting a scheme for reform in Armenia, to which we got the assent of all the European Governments, and two general Inspectors were actually appointed to carry out these reforms just before the war began. And now the sequel is the most hideous and cruel massacre of Armenians that has ever occurred. You will acknowledge I have some cause for despondency."

"However, the British Armenian Committee have resolved to work on, and they were immensely encouraged by the information they received of the great wave of sympathy and of horror which had passed over America, and of the creation of an American Armenian Committee and of the splendid assistance poured forth from America to the refugees in Russia and Egypt."

"We approached the British Foreign Office with a request for an opportunity of raising a debate in the House of Commons and Lord Robert Cecil, who is the best Under Secretary of the Foreign Office in my time at once backed our request, and the result was the debate of last Tuesday night."

"It was a brief debate, but it was one of the most thrilling I have ever heard. It was initiated by Aneurim Williams who is the Chairman of our committee, I followed, and then there was a brief speech from Lord Robert Cecil. It will perhaps be some satisfaction to the American Armenian Committee that their work largely supplied our material."

"On the morning of the debate there was distributed a pamphlet on Armenia written by Arnold Toynbee, a brilliant man of letters, to all the members of the House. I was surprised to find that, amid the mass of literature at such a time, it had already been read by the majority of the House, and its ghastly story had moved everybody. But it ought to be noted that the greater part of the materials for Mr. Toynbee's pamphlet had been supplied by the report off the American Armenian Committee. I may go further and say that the burden of all the speeches was that it was to America more than any other nation that we should look with the most hope for preventing further massacre and for helping those who have escaped massacre."

"There was, however, some difference of opinion on an unofficial request made by me and the official answer of Lord Robert Cecil as to how America could best help. I ventured to suggest that the British Government might make an appeal to President Wilson and to the American Government to take official action. Lord Robert Cecil, however, pointed out that it was impossible for the British Government to dictate or even to suggest to the governments of independent neutral countries what their duty was. 'It is' he said, 'for each Government to settle exactly what it ought to do with reference to foreign Governments.' "

"I however, put as a second line of action that we should make a strong appeal to the sympathy and support of the generous and humane people of the United States themselves to bring relief to the oppressed Armenians, and Lord Robert cordially took up this suggestion. We also look with hope to the intervention of the Pope. Lord Robert Cecil was able to inform the House that humanity was grateful to the Pope for the steps he had already taken and I understand that the Pope will be asked to make a direct appeal to the German Kaiser in addition to the appeal he has already made to the Sultan."

"Another of our requests to the Government was that the British armies and ships should, where possible do their best to rescue any Armenians escaping from massacre, as the French ships had done in the case of 4,000 refugees whom they had been able to land in Egypt, and I understand instructions of this kind have already been sent, and with some good results."

"Finally, I would suggest that the American and British Armenian Committees should keep in constant touch with each other, if necessary by cable. I and others have already had correspondence with Mr. Oscar Straus and Mr. Samuel Dutton, and I trust that by working together we may do something, especially for the refugees. Money is coming in to us in considerable quantities, especially considering all the other demands upon the generosity of the British people; and we have already been able to send to the Armenian Catholikos something like L8,000 or L10,000 and we shall send more as promptly as the money comes in."


New York Times


#43 Ashot

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Posted 11 April 2008 - 02:05 AM

WOMAN DESCRIBES ARMENIAN KILLINGS
German Missionary Says Turks Proclaimed Extermination as Their Aim

FIENDS WORK IN HARPUT
"Let Your Christ Help You!" the Cry as Torture Went On -- Dr. Knapp a victim.


December 12, 1915

The American Committee for the Armenian and Syrian Relief, at 70 Fifth Avenue, announced the reciept yesterday of a cablegram from the American Consul at Tiflis, in which he said that there were more than 180,000 Armenians "in a most pitiful condition," in various provinces that came under his immidiate notice. Of these 110,000 are in the Ervian Province, 20,000 in Elisavethol, 201,000 in Kars, and 50,000 in Tiflis.

The committee also announced that a cablegram was expected cery soon from Dr. Wilson, the head of the commision sent to Tiflis. Details from the scenes of the massacres are reaching the committee daily. These are from officials, missionaries, and other persons well known to its members. One from a German woman missionary, who is stationed not far from the border of the Caucasus, was received within the last three days, and although not written for publication, gives an intimate picture of the terrible fate that has befallen the Armenians.

"Toward the middle of April," she writes, "we heard there were great disturbances. We have heard statements made from both Turks and Armenians; and, as these reports agree in every respect, it is quite plain there is some truth in them, neamely, that the Government of Turkey sent orders that all Armenians were to give up their arms, which the Armenians refused to do, stating that they required them in case of necessity. This caused a regular massacre. All villages inhabited by Armenians were burnt down.

Thinks Dr. Knapp Was Murdered.

"At the beginning of June we heard that the whole Armenian population of Bitlis was done away with. It was at this time that we received news that the American missionary, Dr. Knapp, had been wounded in an Armenian house, and that the Turkish Government had sent him to Diarbekir. The very first night in Diarbekir he died, and the Government explained his death as a result of having overeaten, which if course, nobody believes. When there was no one left in Bitlis to massacre, their attention was called to Musch. Up to now cruelties were committed, but not too publicly; now they have started to shoot people down without any cause; they beat them to deathe because they found delight in doing so.

"In Musch itself, which is a big town, there are alone 25,000 Armenians; every village containing about 500 houses; and not one male Armenian, and but a few women here and there are visible now.

"Beginning of July: In the first week of this month, 20,000 soldiers came from Constantinople over Harput to Musch with munitions and eleven guns, and besieged Musch. In fact, the town had been surrounded since the middle of June. At this time the Mutassarif gave orders that we two German missionaries should leave the town and go to Harput. We pleaded with him to let us stay, for we had in our charge all the orphans and patients, but he was angry and threatened to force us away if we did no do as we were instructed. As we both became suck, we were allowed to remain at Musch. I recieved permission in case we should leave Musch to take the Armenians of our orphanage along; but on my asking for assurances of safety, his only reply was; 'You can take them along; but, being Armenians, their heads may and will be cut off on the way.'

"On the 10th of July Musch was bombarded for several hours, they pretended the reason was because some Armenians had tried to escape. I went to see the Mutessarif, asking him to protect our houses and his reply was: 'Serves you right for staying instead of leaving, as instricted. The guns are here to put an end to Musch. Take refuge with the Turks.' This, of course, was not possible, as we could not leave our charges. A new order was the next day promulgated that the Armenians would be expelled, and three days were given them to be ready. They were told to register themselves at the Governmetn Office before they left. The families could remain, but their property and their money was to be confiscated.

"The Armenians were unable to go, as they had no money to pay for the trip, and they preferred to die in their houses rather than be seperated and endure a lingering death on the read. As mentioned before, three days were given the Armenians to leave; but two hours had scarcely elapsed when the soldiers broke into the houses and arrested every one and threw them into prison. The cannons began to fire, thus preventing the people from registering themselves at the Government Office. We all had to take refuge in the cellar for fear of our orphanage catching fire.

"I went to the Mutessarif and begged him to have mercy on the children at least, but in vain; he replied the Armenian children must perish with their nation. All our people were taken from our hospital and orphanage. They left us three female servants. Thus Musch was burnt down in this monstrous way. Every officer boasted of the number he had personally massacred, thus ridding Turkey of the Armenian race. We left Harput; Harput has become the cemetary of the Armenians.

"Now Let Your Christ Help You!"

In Harput and Mesre the people have had to endure terrible tortures, such as their eyebrows being pulled off, their breasts cut off, their nails pulled out, their feet cut off, or they hammer nails into them, just as they do with horses. The soldiers then cry: "Now let your Christ help you!"

Beginning of July: 2,000 Armenian soldiers were ordered to leave for Aleppo to build roads. The people of Harput were terrified on hearing this, and a panic started in the town. The Vali called the German missionary, Mr. Eheman, and begged him to quiet the people, repeating over and over again that no harm whatever would befall these soldiers. Mr. Eheman believed the Vali and quieted down the people. But they had scarcely left when we heard that they had all been murdered and thrown into a cave. Just a few managed to escape, and we got the reports from them. It was useless to protest to the Vali. The American Consul at Harput protested several times, but the Vali treats him like 'air' and in a most shameful manner.

"Toward the beginning of April, in the presence of Major Lange and several other high officials, such as American and German Consuls, Ekran Bey said quite openly, that their intention was to exterminate the Armenian race. All these details plainly show that the massacre was planned. It is very unsafe now for all missionaries in the interior, the officials show their hatred too plainly, and have often told us that they do not see the necessity of our presence.

The American Committee has already sent more than $100,000 to Ambassador Morgenthau, and much more is needed to alleviate the terrible conditions of the remaining Armenians. Contributions for their relief should be sent to Charles R. Crane, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York.


New York Times

Edited by Ashot, 11 April 2008 - 02:07 AM.


#44 Ashot

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Posted 11 April 2008 - 02:06 AM

MILLION ARMENIANS KILLED OR IN EXILE
American Committee on Relief Says Victims of Turks Are Steadily Increasing

POLICY OF EXTERMINATION
More Atrocities Detailed in Support of Charge That Turkey Is Acting Deliberately.


December 15, 1915

In a statement issued yesterday from the offices of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief at 70 Fifth Avenue, further atrocities committed by Turks upon Armenian Christians were detailed and additional evidence was given to support Lord Bryce's assertion that the massacres are the results of a deliberate plan of the Turkish government to "get rid of the Armenian question," as Abdul Hamid once said, by getting "rid of the Armenians."

Professor Samuel T. Dutton, Secretary of the committee said:

"According to all the best evidence which the American Committee has received, it is probably well within the truth to say that of the 2 million Armenians in Turkey a year ago, at least 1 million have been killed or forced into Islam, or compelled to flee the country, or have died upon the way to exile, or are now up on the road to the deserts of Northern Arabia, or are already there. The number of victims is constantly increasing. Surely there can be no greater need of immediate help, even in these troublous times, then the desperate need of the Armenian refugees. The American Committee has already done much in collecting and sending funds, as has also the English Committee, but there is still the direst need of generous contributions. All contributions should be sent to Charles R. Crane, Treasurer, 70 Fifth Avenue."

Walter H. Mallory, Executive Secretary of the American Committee, said that the committee was in close touch with the Lord Mayor's committee of London and that "daily authentic reports of almost unbelievable atrocities" were received. In the statement made public there was an excerpt from a letter received by the American Committee from the English committee, which read:

"The committee knows that there are 180,000 refugees still in the Caucasus besides 30,000 who have died there, and 70,000 who have returned to parts of Turkey and Persia.

A large part of the statement is taken up with a letter received by the American Committee from a missionary stationed in Konia. In part, the letter read:

"Soon after the great deportation that preceded the arrival of the new Vali, Miss C. and I drove out to Kachin Han, the first station of the railroad toward Eregli. Just to follow the crowd, as a large number had been driven off on foot with the expectation of taking the railroad later on. Kachin Han is about three hours from here by carriage, and even so near to Konia as this we found about one hundred people, sitting and lying about the station in utter desolation. They had been there three days: most of them had eaten up all the provisions they had and looked haggard and emaciated, veritable famine victims such as one sees in pictures of a scene in India.

"The train from Konia arrived while we were there, and the greater number of the of the people dragged themselves to the cars in an effort to get on board, but were pushed back by the gendarmes, partly because they had no tickets and partly because there was no room: so the poor people were forced to turn back.


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:47 AM

THE PERIL OF ARMENIA


January, 1913

The recent dramatic rush of events in the Balkan Peninsula has brought to pass in a month that would have appeared a year ago to be a faint and remote dream. We have seen the up rising in armies of a Balkan Alliance which has swiped before it the great armies of Turkey as dust before the wind, until the Ottoman Power is at the present moment making its last stand behind the lines of Chataldja, and little is left of Turkey in Europe except Constantinople and its adjacent strip of seaboard. Europe has been shaken out of her slumber; diplomatists are meeting in council, efforts- we would fain hope real and earnest efforts-are being made by great Powers to "see the things through," with due regard to the claims of the gallant Allies and without involving themselves in the iniquities of a general war of the iniquities of the general war of self-interest. Would God that such a genuine "Consort of Europe" had acted together long years ago , to secure the righteous ends which have now had to be won at so awful a coast of blood and misery, of devastated lands and ruined homes.

"If before his duty man with listless spirit stands, Ere long the great Avenger takes the task from out his hands."

It may well be that Turkey also has lost her opportunity, not only in Europe but likewise in Asia. For where as all evidence goes to prove that in the former massacres it was only necessary to proclaim that the Padishah commanded the slaughter to cease, for it cease at once, when the next occurs the Central Government may be powerless to control the demons it has raised.

Europe, however, is awake at last. But perhaps it is not to be wondered at that she is too much absorbed in the fate of Turkey in Europe to trouble herself with the results of the war in Turkey in Asia. yet the Powers cannot escape from the responsibility laid upon them as signatories of the Treaty of Berlin (1878),which promised reforms to be carried out in the Armenian Provinces-reforms which they well know have never been carried out. Indeed, by the cruel irony, it is the "protected" provinces which have been swept with massacre. England, by the Cyprus Convention, herself undertook the protectorate of the Christians in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey-i.e. , "all the land inhabited by the Armenian race and religion." And Englishmen may derive what comfort they can from the fact that England has from time to time remonstrated with the Porte through her Ambassadors and Consuls and procured the removal of a very few of the worst officials (who were promptly decorated and promoted by Abdul Hamid). One thing has been proved up till now is, that without guarantees no reforms have been or ever will be carried into effect.

what is the Armenia to hope from the astonishing war that has freed the Balkan States? She looks to England in trembling apprehension, for unless England intervenes, the blow that frees Macedonia may only rivet more tightly the chains that bind Armenia.

In this war the first time Christians have been allowed to serve in the Army. For generations a tax was taken from them instead of military service; since the granting of the Constitution they share in the conscription, and only wealthy families can redeem their sons, and that at a ruinous price. Formerly a man who supported a family was exempt, but now these breadwinners have been taken. What has it meant for the Christian lads, many of them engaged in sedentary toil and quit unused to exercise, to be suddenly torn from their simple homes and set to walk six hours a day through slush and snow without proper shoes, clothes, or food with companions who would treat them worse than dogs.

How the hearts of young men must have stirred when they heard the Bulgarian proclamatoin. The allies are their brothers, fighting for the things that they too hold dear: Religion, Home, theirs women's honor, and the safety of their children. But the duty of these unhappy lads is to fight for the race that has oppressed and harried them, and made life a burden to them for five hundred years. Their enrolment in the army seemed to some the one hope that future massacres and outrage in Armenia might become impossible , but this war has turned for Armenia a hope into a tragedy. The whisper will be repeated in markets and cafes, in the Khans and by the roadsides, "It was the Christians". "What else could come when the good old custom was broken?" And if these lie safe in their graves on the open hill-side or in the snowy valley, they have left hostages-mothers and brothers, sisters and little children.

Soon the broken army of the Moslems will be wandering through Anatolia. They are being dumped down anywhere with no provision made for them, and what will come of that? The past tells us. At the end of the eighteenth century whole armies of men owning no authority destroyed cities and laid waste lands; it seems all too probable this experience will be repeated. and Sassoun, Marash, Aintab, Harpoot, Urfa, and Adana -what have they to tell us? At Urfa still stands a large flat-roofed building, the thick stone walls of which are cracked: the flames, which split them, devoured between two and three thousand Armenians, living and dead, in one great holocaust, on that dread Sunday. December 29th, 1895. there is a narrow alley by the ruins of the burned Abgarian School at Adanawhere the Constitutional (!) troops shot down the Armenians who were trying to escape the flames, till they lay piled higher than a man could reach. It is there that Armenian faith in the Revolution lies buried. The next massacres may not be organized so perfectly, beginning with the sound of the trumpet and ending when the authorities give the signal, as at Urfa, but they will hardly be less deadly if perpetrated by hungry and demoralized soldiery. That eleven Kurds, turned out of the army, should have dared to attack Miss Matheison and her orphans (1912) on the much frequented road between Hadjin and Everek shows that the country is in a very disturbed state. Her presence saved the girls, for foreigners are generally respected, thanks to the Capitulations, and, if murdered, their States get indemnity, but they cannot always save their Armenian friends. Thus it was in vain that that Dr. Christie clasped an Armenian youth in his arms when the mob bore down upon them. He only heard the deaf-scream as the jagged knife was plunged and withdrawn(April, 1909).

The Capitulations which protect foreigners, by making them self-governing, are said to be a survival of the old Roman law; they are necessary when the moral and religious code of a country is inferior to that of the foreigners resident in it. "Look ye to it," said Gallio, the Roman Governor, as he drove the disputants from his judgment-seat. They must settle the affairs of their millet, or community, themselves he could not be bothered.

It is not usually known that the same idea is found in the position of the Armenians to-day. Thus Mahomet II. was acting by precedent when on conquering Turkey, he gave the Christians of Turkey judicial courts of their own, making the Patriarch (his nominee) their political head, with the rank of Vizier, responsible to the Sultan only , and all the Bishops responsible to the Patriarch. This resulted, through the sale of offices, in the degradation of the priesthood and the Church. Then in 1862 all real power passed into the hands of clerical and lay councils elected by the Representative Assembly of 140 Armenians. This Assembly was meant to be communal body, dealing with the affairs of the Armenian community. Nowadays i8t is called the National Assembly, but it must be borne in mind that the Turks are still the ruling community, Regarding Christians as rayahs. The meetings of this Assembly have been very stormy of late, for the Patriarch has been driven to bay. In vain does he remonstrate and protest to the Turkish Ministers. The Turkish Government allows murderers of his flock to go unpunished, the local Governors conceal facts and abet assassins, and as long as the Armenians are not allowed arms to defend themselves from the Kurds, his position is untenable. Hence, both the Patriarchs have tendered their resignations. It is noteworthy that at this sitting the Archbishop of Pera said that the only remedy was to demand the application of Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty.

This Article might well be quoted, for it not only promises reform, but actually promises security from the Kurds. The only thing Europe did to give them this security was to remonstrate with Sultan Abdul Hamid, who replied by arming the Kurds and enrolling then as irregular cavalry under his own name, Hamidieh. Meanwhile, he refused arms to the Christians, and this refusal is still enforced by the Turkish Government, in spit of the promise of the "Young Turk" Constitution. And yet no one can read the account of the granting of the Constitution as given by the official reports in our Government White Paper (Turkey, No.1,1909) without being struck by the fact that everywhere its promulgation was a terror to evil-doers.

Is it to be a beautiful promise unfulfilled? It would be seen so, far so common has rape and murder become that to-day no Armenian dare travel alone. Every day brings news of the lifting of sheep and cattle. In one district alone 5,000 sheep had been taken. The inspector of the Schools of the See of Aghtamar, with his companion, has been murdered in Karkar and cruelly mutilated. The reports come, not from one region, but from places as wide apart as Van and Adans, Bitlis and Hadjin. To all this things the Turkish Government is supremely indifferent, and the Patriarch interviews Ministers and utters protests in vain

On account of this disorders and the indifference of the Government, Noradougian Effendi, the Minister of foreign Affairs of Turkey, sent in his resignation on September 28th, 1912.He was asked to draw up a scheme of for Eastern Anatolia. But enough of such schemes: There is no intention, and there never was any intention, of letting these paper reforms be put into execution.

Thus the year 1913 opens gloomily for Armenia. The war has caused stagnation in trade and a rise in the price of foodstuffs; moreover, the cattle have been taken transport work, besides those stolen by the Kurds, and the able-bodied youths have been sent to the seat of war. Should their Moslem neighbors be roused to fanatical fury and visit the calamities of the war upon the Armenians, the latter will be in a peculiarly defenseless position. It will be another case of the Christians and the burning of Rome. Turk and Kurds have so regarded the Armenians as their milky cows, whom they can drain with impunity, that it does not seem possible that a defeated army returning to Anatolia, unfed but armed, and bearing in their harts a grudge for their cruel suffering and shameful repulse can settle down quietly. The fact that the Sheikul-Islam has issued an Encyclical to all the Muftis of the disturbed provinces, condemning religious fanaticism and commanding them to preach against it, is a ray in the darkness. He points out that the Sheriat or sacred law used in the Turkish Courts ordains the security of the non-Moslem as well as the Moslem. But whether or not his fata proclaiming the Jehad , or Holy War, deluges Asiatic Turkey in blood will largely depend on the used made of the Moslems pulpit. In 1908 a most effective and beneficent use was made of this pulpit as is shown in our Government White Paper (Turkey. No 1, 1909, Section No.65).

The Mufti of Silvan on the occasion of the recent festival of Bairam preached against the Christians, especially the Armenians, and that district is much agitated in consequence, for before all the great massacres of 1894-1897 and 1909 the fanatics of the people was fanned by preachers sent on purpose. Thus the Thursday before the massacre at Antioch, a grand personage, claiming to be the Head of the Society of Moslems, vowed to devote himself even to the death for religion and country, came harangued the Turks, and the teaching and buying up of arms and ammunition went on till Monday, April 19th. 1909. On that afternoon, while the Mohammedian chiefs were actually proclaiming "Peace, Liberty, and Fraternity," the massacre began and lasted until the arrival of the warship for which the British Vice-Consul had applied. Out of all that city hardly any Armenian was remained alive.

Members of this society are being sent to the Chataldja lines, and it is with this spirit that the Ulemasare trying to inspire the troops. Well might one ask, "Are the warships ready?" They will be needed to help the Turkish Government to keep order, not merely at Constantinople, but on the Black Sea coast and along the Cilitian shore.

The polished Turkish gentleman seems to have a fascination for certain English minds. Yet, in many cases, he was the organizer of "The events." On the other hand, massacres were doubtless rendered more hideous by the letting loose of the savage section that is found at the bottom of every population. In Turkey, however, the soldiery has invariably acted alongside of these ruffians.

Yet the Turkish peasant under a good Governor is often a quiet, though, speaking generally, the Armenian nation is "The industrious, energetic, self respecting element in the Turkish Empire," while it may be mentioned that there is a long list of the illustrious Russian Generals who were Armenians.

That the Armenians should have kept up the sanctity of home life, through all these centuries of oppression, while going in constant fear of having their women and girls torn from them, shows that there must be moral grit in the race; and their devolution at all costs to that church, which has, throughout, been their one bond of national unity and their guide and consoler, must appeal to all who have any reverence for religion or patriotism.

Men of known judgment and ability, long resident in Turkey, testify that all nationalities can live side by side peaceably and happily, provided only the local governor is just.

We read that at the present moment the governors of the provinces where outrages are most frequent neither punish nor arrest the criminals, but spend their time in searching for arms in Armenian houses. "It is the same donkey," as the Eastern proverb says. Just in this way did they rob the Armenians of Urfa of all weapons before they slaugtered them in 1895.

A Mohammedan governor can, if he wishes, protect his subjects from robbery and outrage and make life worth living, but it is impossible for a Mohammedan governor to treat the Mohammedans and Christians under him as equal, for this is against his religion. The Koran forbids molestation and cruel treatment of subject races who pay their taxes, but inculcates the dogma that all "infidels" ought to be the bondmen of the "true believers." To conquer them by the sword and hold them in subjection is the duty of all true Moslems. All reforms which promise equality are mere falsehoods wherewith to blind Europe, for the enlightened views of the present Sheik-ul-Islam and some other Turkish leaders have not yet permitted the mass of people.

The injustice of the present molestation of Armenians is all the more glaring because the Yong Turkey Party owes them a debt of gratitude. For it is not too much to say that, without the loyal support of the Armenians, the Young Turks could never have overtrown the Palace camarilla which was shaping the life of the country. Indeed, there are those who affirm that it was an Armenian brain that planned the wonderfully successful coup of July 24th, 1908.

After the granting of the Constitution on July 28th, 1908. it seemed for a few months as if the Golden Age had come. All nationalities fraternized, and in future there were to be neither Armenians, Greeks, Turks, nor Albanians, but all were Osmanil (Ottomans). All political prisoners were set free, exiles returned, and the Royal Princes of the blood were allowed to come out of their seclusion; freed from the returned, and the Royal Princes of the blood were allowed to come out of their seclusion; freed from the lies and spies the land breathed more freely; and men began to think that the Committee of Union and Progress had converted Midhat's Constitution of1876into a reality.

Amongst the Young Turkey Party were men who had risen above the teaching of their Prophet and were willing to give equality to all. Through them something was done, by appointing better men as governors, and this saved Aitab, Malatia, and Harpoot from sharing the fate of the Adana. Yet to-day the Armenians are not free, although the law courts no longer refuse to hear Christian evidence, the verdict is given on the Moslem evidence. Now they have to fear not only the returning army, but the Turks from the Balkan who are trekking back to Asia and will need homesteads. These are passing Constantinople with their families and family belongings, their cattle, and their buffalo and Ox-carts, much as they passed into Europe five hundred years ago. They affirm that their homes were burnt by the retreating Turkish army, not by the Bulgarians; the latter are carrying the war in a civilized fashion.

Twenty five years ago Mr. Freeman foretold that, unless the two following points were insisted on at the coming Berlin Conference, the whole work would have to be done again. In the face of the present situation, it might be well to remember them:

1st. What ever be the form of government in any of these lands, the Turk must have no hand in choosing the governors. 2nd. No spot in any of the lands that are to be set free must be garrisoned by Turkish soldiers.

Will this warning again be neglected?

We would, in conclusion, further commend the following suggestion, among the many that have been made for the improvement of the condition of the Armenians, since these three would seem to be feasible and moderate.

(1) An increase in the number of foreign consuls. But commercial consuls have ceased to be of much use since Turkey learned that no action would be taken on their reports. (2) The substitution of military census for commercial consuls. The Turk respects things military, and it is certain from past occurrences that the military consul is more effective; this would surely outweigh the extra coast. (3) The appointment of a Christian Governor over the six Vilayets. The difference between these three is briefly this: (1) Civil consuls can report on a massacre-e.g., Vice-Consul Fitzmaurice at Urfa, March, 1896. (2) Military consuls can stop a massacre-e.g., Major Doughty-Wylie at Adana, Aprile, 1909. (3) Governors can prevent a massacre and restore order-e.g., Daud *****, who wages the fires Governor of the Lebanon, installed July 14th, 1861.

This last was an Armenian Catholic, and, in spite of the oft-repeated prophecies of the Porte that the appointment of a Christian governor would rouse the Moslem population to fresh outbursts of fury and fanaticism and results in worst massacres than ever, he restored the Lebanon to prosperity tranquility. And to-day travelers tell how the very fields reveal where Turkish misrule ends and constitutional rule begins. But it must born in mind that Daud ***** was appointed governors of Lebanon for three years and could not be removed at the fancy of the Sultan. (The disastrous effect of changing governors, when their schemes for improvement are but just begun, may be seen at Adana to-day. Djemal Bey has been sent to Baghdad, and the orphanage remains unfinished, the rebuilding and orphans grants unpaid.)

Moreover, Daud was not obliged to depend on Turkish troops to keep order, otherwise he must have failed. At first he was supported by the French troops, who only left in August, when the ships of the French and English squadrons still cruised off that coast; and while thus sheltered he prepared a military force from the inhabitants of the Lebanon which made the presence of Turkish soldiery unnecessary.

This is what is wanted in the six Armenian Vilayets to-day, and the Moslem section of the population would benefit only less than the Armenian. For if the Kurds were restrained and justice was administered, the wave of prosperity which would flow through these fertile provinces would benefit every inhabitant, and open a market for Europeian commerce. The alarming predictions of the Turkish Government were falsified in the case of the Lebanon, and if the same Constitution were granted to the Armenians, although the Porte might try to fulfill its own prediction by stirring up fanaticism, it is more than probable that history would repeat itself.

Were the six Powers as thoroughly agreed as the Balkan Allies have been that Turkish misrule must end, it would cease at once; for the Turk is a good subject, and his fatalism makes him the slave of the accomplished fact. Let him but realize the Fate, in the shape of United Europe, is too strong for him, and he will fold his hands and say "Kismet, it is decreed."


Lucy C. F. Cavendish.


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:49 AM

YOUNG TURKS' MISRULE IN ARMENIA


July 5, 1913

"OUR SHIPS can not climb the mountains of Armenia", was the brutal remark of Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister of England, on being appealed to for interposition by the Christian Armenians whose homes and farms were being desolated and drenched with the blood of massacre by Turks and Kurds. This was in 1896, under Abdul-Hamid, but the same atrocities and injustices, it is charged, have been perpetrated with many aggravations under the Young Turks. The revolutionary Government at Constantinople aims at centralization. All national separatism or distinction is to be obliterated. The Armenian language, into which the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures were translated in the early centuries of the faith, is to be abolished. CharleVellay gives in the Revue de Paris the following list of the grievances which form the crux of the Armenian question:

"In opposing by so many persecutions the development of the Armenian race, the present Ottoman Government refuses to Armenia the free use of her own language and traditional customs, thus denying them rights of which even Abdul-Hamid never ventured to dispute the reality and legitimacy. In his day the Armenian nation carried on its own administration, civil and religious. It possesed a national assembly, and the usual administrative departments. It disposed of an annual budget raised by special imposts. How could the Young Turks force the country to renounce her national tongue, her national customs, all the privileges and rights which the former regime had approved? Could the party at Constantinople fail to see that their policy of unification, of centralization, would inevitably become an instrument of oppression when operated in the Caucasian provinces?" The Armenians, 500,000 in number as against nearly 2,000,000 Mussulmans, were quick to realize this. They were now between the devil and the deep sea. The Kurds, rapacious and cruel bandits by profession, descendants of those Karduch whose fierceness and pitiless savagery were a scourge to Xenophonin the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, are on the side to murder and plunder, and the Turk, on the other, driving the churchmen of Gregory the Illuminator and of the modern Protestant evangelists to be cut down by hundreds and their farms taken possession of by the Kurdish brigands. The writer we are quoting declares that Turkey actually aims at the extermination of the Armenians:

"Thus by a singular paradox the Ottoman Constitutional Government was very soon regarded by the Armenians as embodying the most brutal despotism. Miscarriages of justice became as frequent as ever. Nothing was changed in the violent or underhand methods of the central power. While the Turks massacred the Armenian's, the Kurds seized on the lands which the fleeing possessors had left as they crossed the frontier. When the original proprietors returned to reoccupy their possessions and recover their goods and protested against these usurpations, the Turkish Council of State decided against them. As the Armenian population is above all things a peasant population, all these persecutions threaten their very existence. For Mussulman immigrants are brought in by the Turks from Caucasus or Turkestan and installed upon the stolen farms. These farms are confiscated on a thousand pretexts; sometime signed by an illegal plea of exchange or of imperfect title, sometimes by forged deeds, false witness, sometimes because of imposts that have allegedly left unpaid, or standing indebtedness. Only recently the Armenian archbishop of Constantinople submitted to the Grand Vizier his reports of the farms or fields, 7,000 in number, which have been taken from the Armenians by the Turks." The European Powers are then scored for their indifference or incapacity in checking these outrages. The Balkan War, by which Turkey was finally driven out of Europe, calls attention to Armenia's plight. The whole press of Europe is asking if the Powers will interfere. To quote further:

"The deliberate extermination of the Armenian race is going on by these varied methods-massacre, murders, forced emigration, as much to-day as ever before. The Armenian Question now lies before Europe, and since the Ottoman Empire shows itself incapable of solving it, needs must be that a solution comes from the outside." Mr. Vellay says Russia, England, and Germany are debarred by self-interest from intervening. When England speaks of Armenian autonomy she is silenced by Russia, who does not wish for a second Bulgaria on her Asiatic frontier. England and Germany wish Armenia to remain a Turkish buffer state to prevent Russia's expansion to the south. As this writer declares:

"In all this diplomatic discussions the interest and safety of the Armenians themselves unfortunately counts for next to nothing. The outlook of the Powers does not extend beyond their own economic or political interests." An Armenian paper published in Constantinople, the Avedaper, recently contained a review of the situation by an Armenian clergyman, the Rev. A. B. Shumavonian, in which he complains of the "much cry and little wool" of the Armenian press agitation. "We have been deceived quite long enough," he exclaims indignantly. "The Times, the Temps, the Noveye Vremya, and the Berliner Tageblatt, have nothing new to say, more especially as our wounds is not of those that are healed of ink." He concludes with a warning to Turkey, who may find Russia making Armenia a stepping-stone to the absorption of part of Islam's Asiatic possessions. Russia already has "a sphere of influence" in northern Persia. What if she should strengthen her position there and make stronger her line of communication by absorbing the Turkish Vilayets south of the Caucasus Mountains? To quote further this patriotic and well-informed Armenia:

"Not a single Government wishes or is able to defend the integrity of Turkey if the Turkish nation does not hasten to strengthen its position by internal reforms. . . . . . . "Turkey lost Cyprus without insuring any real and permanent gain. Perhaps the Russian Cossacks may succeed in climbing those mountains where English ships cold not ascend, and then if Turkey asks help from the west, Sir Edward Grey may be tempted to repeat Lord Salisbury's clever remark and say, "OUR SHIPS can not ascend the mountains of Armenia."


Translation made for The Literary Digest.


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:51 AM

MOSLEMS THREATENING WAR ON CHRISTIANS


Demonstrations at Damascus
Invasion of Egypt Is Feared


October 31, 1914

By Marcony Transatlantic Wirless Telegraph to The New York Times. CONSTANTINOPLE, Oct.30,-- Sir Louis Mallet , the British Ambassador, has called the attention of the Grand Vizier to reports of an intended Bedouin raid into Egyptian territory. He warned the Vizier that such a raid would be regarded as a hostile act on the part of Turkey by the British Government.

LONDON, Saturday, Oct, 31

There have been great manifestation at Damascus, Asiatic Turkey in favor of a war against Christians, and especially against Great Britain, according to a dispatch to the Exchange Telegraph Company from Athens. The massing of Bedouins along the Egyptian frontier, the dispatch adds, is being continued. Strong Turkish cavalry divisions are said to have arrived in the neighborhood of the gulf of Akabah on the Red sea about 200 miles south of the Suez Canal. This news contained in a Cairo dispatch received in Vienna, and forwarded to London by the correspondent at Amsterdam of the Central News Agency.


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:52 AM

REPORT CHRISTIANS IN PERIL IN TURKEY
Views of Refugees Noe in Petrograd--All Men Forced Into the Army


November 12, 1914

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. PETROGRAD, Nov. 11, (Dispatch to The London Morning Post.)-- Refugees who have arrived here from Constantinople report that the state of things there and in Turkey generally appalling.

Brigandage, murder, and atrocities are committed. Armenians being the chief-victims, but all Christians and foreigners are in great danger. One refugee, a Greek tells me he ran away to escape forced military service, leaving his wife and mother behind. According to his account Turkish authorities are forcing every man possible into the rank of the army.

The fighting on Saturday Sunday at Koprikos was not renewed on Monday, but the day was spent in a vigorous artillery duel, apparently without result. In the meantime Russian columns are marching up in two directions to reinforce each other for an attack on Erzerum.

Several strategic points of the utmost importance are already in the hands of the Russians.


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:53 AM

ERZERUM FANATICS SLAY CHRISTIANS


November 29, 1914

PETROGRAD. Nov 28---A telegram received here from Odessa describes an outbreak of fanatical rioting in Erzrum. Dispatches reaching Odessa from this Turkich city say that, following the posting of a proclamation calling the Mohammedans to a holy war , all the Armenian clubs, churches, and schools were demolished by a mob. Four Armenians, including one woman, were killed in the streets.

New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:54 AM

TURKISH PEOPLES MISERY


December 5, 1914

The Armenian Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions has issued a bulletin relative to conditions in Turkey, which contains excerpts from letters recently received in this country from missionaries in Turkey. Some of them read:

A. N. Andru of Mardin. --Everything is in confusion. Trade is utterly paralyzed, travel is impossible, transportation is stopped, schools are stripped of their teachers, money has ceased to circulate, drafts cannot be cashed, grain remains unthrashed and unwinnowed for lack of animals and men to do the work; the labor market is closed and hunger in the midst of plenty is already looking in at the door of thousands of homes, hence two, three, four and in some cases, five of the breadwinners have been summoned to the ranks.

E. C. Woodly of Marash.--Churches cannot pay pastors' salaries and we cannot help because of our shortage of funds. From one of our best outstation churches seventy-two out of ninety-four male members have been called out as soldiers.

E. C. Partridge of Sivas.--Everything that is movable is being taken from shops and in some cases from houses. Thousands of villagers have been sleeping hungry in the streets of Sivas for three weeks, while their wheat is wasting in the fields.

Mary D. Uline of Bitlis.--If ever relief was needed it is now. People will starve to death and die of exposure. Hundreds and hundreds of wild Arabs and Kurds from the south have been going through the city on their horses. They helped themselves to whatever they wanted from merchants and travelers.


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:55 AM

HANG CHRISTIANS IN STREET


December 5, 1914

LONDON. Monday, Dec. 14.--- A Petrograd dispatch to THE TIMES says: "Advise from the front at Erzerum . Turksh Armenia describe the position of 20,000 Christian s there as precarious because of their Russian sympathies.

Three hundered thousand Turkish troops are mobilized at Erzerum. Hundreds of Armenians have been imprisoned and many hunged in the streets, without trial, as examples."


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:56 AM

TURKISH WOMEN REVOLT


December 14, 1914

Special Caple to THE NEW YORK TIMES. PETROGAD, Dec.13, (Dispatches to The London Times.) --Refugees arriving at Tiflis report an extraordinary anty-war demonstration by Turkish women in Konak and Erzerum. Women threw stones and rioted for several hours, and when threatened by guards rent their garments and paraded the streets almost in the state of nudity, thus compelling the guards to retire in obedience to the Islamic law. They forced the vali to dispatch the telegram to Constantinople protesting against the war.

Armenian refugees from Erzerum describe the terrible position of 20,000 Christians whom the Turks threaten with massacre for their Russian sympathy. The prisons are full of Armenians and Greeks suspected of espionage. They are hanged in the streets and squares without trial and the corpses are suspended for weeks from the streets lamps. In passing Turks spit on the bodies and compel Christians to do the same.

There are now 200,000 Turkish soldiers and 1,500 officers in Erzerum, where a large quantity of provender and military supplies is stored. German officers control everything in the town and fortress.


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:57 AM

SAYS TURKS ADVISE CHRISTIANS TO FLEE


January 11, 1915

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. ATHENS, Jan. 9, (Dispatch to The London Daily Telegraph.) --- A man arriving from Constantinople who is in a position to know the facts has given me a mass of information concerning the present condition of affairs in the Turkish capital. He says the Turkish Government has no fear of a revolution, and that measures taken against the enemies of Young Turks Committee are so drastic that no concarted movement on their part is possible.

The whole attention anti anxiety of the Government is concentrated on the posible forcing of the Dardanelles by the allied fleet. It seems also that this fear is shared by their German mentors, for Baron Von Wangenheim, the German Ambassador, has warned the Minister of a Balkan State in Constantinople that in the event of the allied ficet's forcing the straits, the Turks will vent their wrath by a massacre of Christian population. In Constantinople no endeavor is any longer made by the Ministers to hide their feelings towards there Christian subjects.

To the Greek Patriarchate, who was sent to Talaat ***** to remonstrate against the excesses committed by the organs of his Ministry, he unequivocally replied that there was no room for Christians in Turkey and that best the Patriarchate could do for his flock would be to advise them to bclear out of the country and make room for Moslem refugees.


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 04:58 AM

CHRISTIANS IN GREAT PERIL


January 13, 1915

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. ATHENS, Jan. 12 (Dispatch to The London Morning Post.)--- It is asserted in well-inforemed circles that the Turks for the present have abandoned their advance against Egypt.

In Constantinople anxiety regarding the possible forcing of the Dardanells continues.

It is evident that the situation of the Christian is extremely precarious even in the large cities, and Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior, has stated to the Councillor of the Greek Patriarchate that in Turkey henceforth there will be room only for Turks. While he was profuse in assurances to the Greek Minister regarding the cessation of anti-Greek persecutions, no real amelioration of the situation is perceptible.

The Turks are again fortifying the Tchatalja lines.


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 05:00 AM

HOW TURKISH EMPIRE SHOULD BE MADE AFTER THE WAR


January 24, 1915

Written for THE NEW YORK TIMES BY A STUDENT OF TURKISH AFFAIRS. Turkey has the second largest share of responsibility in the outbreak of the war,for the reason that her unspeakable system of rule forced the Balkan war, which resulted in the Austro-Servian controversy. Her continued hopeless incapacity in the government of her extensive territories excited the greed and ambitions of the powera and made her a bone of contention among them. It is a well-known fact that the maintenance of the Turkish political entity for the last 200 years has been made possible by the rivalry of the Great Powers. The history of the Turk has been uniformly marked with blood, fire and destruction. His success was imposaible from the very beginning of his power. During the chaos and anarchy incident largely to religious dissensions, crusaders' movements, political upheavals, to which the Eastern World was subjected in the Middle Ages he emerged from the confines of Central Asia a primitive barbarian,and having been converted to the faith of Islam, he carried, wherever he went, the green flag that rejected all compromise and defied all canons of Germany and, in his irresistible sweeping march, conquered a dozen or more principalities. His power in Asia,in Africa,and in Europe rested on the cruel support of his sword. The civilization of his subject races he could not comprehend so he left them separate and distinct in the administration of their church and educational affairs. But the very moment he saw signs of progress in the activities of his subjects and a revival of national aspirations, he adressed himself to the support of steel and powder. Once he reached the height of his power and his rule seemed to be secure from external aggression, he reverted to his natural life of last and sonseous indulgence. Utterly devoid of the sense of justice and wanting in administrative knowledge, the rule he inaugurated has always been characterised by official indolence and incompetency and shameful graft and corruption. Always in the minority, without any social system of his own, with a religion in eternal conflict with that of his subject races, sensuous, lustful, indolent, deceitful, and incorrigible, ge was doomed to utter failure from the very beginning.

Without going very far back, if we review tersely the nature of the Turk's existence in the twentieth century, we can easily gain a sufficient grasp of his character. The intolerable nature of his rule forced the Servian insurrections in 1804 and 1817, the Grecian massacres in 1821, and the Russo-Turkish war in 1828, when Greece, a wretched Turkish province, broke loose from the Turkish rule and Servia became autonomous; the massacres of Maronite Christians in1860; the massacres of Christians in Bulgaria , Bosnia-Herzegovinain 1877; the Armenian massacres in 1894 and 1896; the Greco-Turkish war in1898; the Macedonian massacres in 1903 again Armenian massacres in Cecilia in 1909, during the power of Young Turk, present sufficiently the ghastly picture of what the Turk has been. He not only smothered the economic and intellectual sources of the East, but he became imprenetrable barrier between East and West.TO the humiliation of Christendom, it should be said that the Turkish nuisance would have been impossible wereit notfor the cruel diplomacy of Great Powers of Europe, whose diplomacy has been influenced not by human considerations, but by considerations of national gain and prestige. And this despite the fact that the senselessness of this sort of diplomacy was proved in many instance, in that no one power could maintain a long lease of power at Constantinople without being betrayed at the psychological moment in favor of another power.

Only recently, in the course of conversation with a leading member of the Turkish Cabinet, I expressed by serious doubt if the Turkish Empire could ever be reformed through the Turkish element. It is to be noted that, out of an estimated population of 20,000,000 in the Turkish Empire not over 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 are Turks. In European Turkey and Anatolia, where the bulk of the Turkish element is to be found the Turk is in the minority. The Greek and the Armenian, who combined are about five millions. In equal number are admittedly superior to the Turk morally and intellectually. They are consummate merchants and financiers, industrious, and progressive. The Jew And the Christian Arab , known to us as the Syrian , are the poers of the Greek and the Armenian. The Greek and the Armenian represent about 25%. of the population of Turkey. They control about 70% of its commerce, whereas the Turk constitute about 30% of the population of Turkey and he controls about 10%of its commerce. In education,he is incomparably far behind the Greek and Armenian. As a Mohammedan , he he does not intermingle socially with the Christian race, and therefore, he cannot assume his rightful place in the leadership of the social system.

It is hard to see how a proud German Empire could engage in serious business with this adventurers, upstarts, deceitful and crafty visionaries, who in the course of seven years, plunged their country into four foreign wars, and lost one-fourth of their possessions, and now give excellent promise og reducing the once gigantic Turkish Empire into a miniature principality in this momentous conflict, for centuries a source of perpetual international complication and unending human sufferings, the Turkish Empire should be apportioned among the principle race that inhabit it, which, by tradition history, and their known fitness for self- government, are entitled to recognition among the Great Powers, who in the course of centuries, have fixed for themselves by common consents pheres of influence. To wit: TURKEY Square
Miles
Ismid...........................3,100
Bigha...........................2,600
Brussa.........................25,000
Castamuni......................20,000
West Angora, West Kizil Irmak..12,000
West Koneih....................21,500
East Smyrna.....................6,000
______
Total........................ 92,050


GREECE
West Smyrna....15,000


ARMENIA
Harpoot.................................2,500
Sivas..................................21,500
East Angora, East Kisil Irmak..........13,350
East Konieh............................18.000
North Aleppo, North Aintab, inclusive...3,700
Adana..................................15,500
______
Total................................ 90,200


SYRIA, FRENCH PROTECTORATE.
Aleppo south of Beilan on the east,
inclusive, and south of Urfan on
the west, inclusive....................22,500
Beirut, exlusive of Palestine...........3,200
Syria, north of Damascus, inclusive....15,000
Lebanon.................................1,160
Zor, west of Euphrates.................11,000
______
Total................................ 52,860


JUDEA
Beirut, south of Lebanon................3,000
Syria, south of Damascus...............22,000
Jerusalem, exclusive if city and en-
virons..................................4,500
______
Total................................ 29,500


INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION
Jerusalem and environs..................2,000


ENGLAND
Bagdad.................................42,500
Basra..................................54,000
Hejaz..................................97,000
Yemen..................................75,000
Zor, or Mesopotamia,
west of Euphrates......................20,000
Moussoul, south of Little Zab..........15,000
______
Total............................... 303,500


RUSSIA
Trebizonde............................13,000
Erzerume..............................19,300
Van...................................15,000
Bitlis................................10,500
Diarbekir.............................15,000
Moussoul, north of Little Zab. begin
ning from east of Tigris..............20,000
A strip begining of the western angle
of Diabekir and bounded on the north
by Euphrates and on the south by a line
north of Urfah, then running wester-
ly to Alexandretia....................5,000
______
Total.............................. 97,600


DARDANELLES
Especially the Straits of the Darda-
nelles should be of fortifi-
cations: they should not be used as
a naval base by any power in the
time of peace or war ; the merchant
and war vessels of all nations should
have the rightof the Dardanelles
on equal conditions.



I will now offer brief explanations for the reasons of the territorial adjustments proposed above.

The part of Turkey in Europe allotted for bulgaria, and the proposed arrangement for the remaining portion of Turkey in Europe, including Constantinople, require no explanation.

As for the territories to be assigned to an independent Turkey, the following reasons should be sufficient:

More than fifty per centum of the Turkish element in the Turkish Empire are to be found within the boundaries of the territories assigned for Turkey. The first two capitals of the Turks are to be found within its borders. For cemmercial purposes, the ?? are unexcelled, in that they command extensive frontages on the Black Sea, and of the Mediterranean. The soil of every foot of the land assigned for Turkey is excellent for agriculture.


New York Times


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 05:01 AM

PREDICT A MASSACRE


March 10, 1915

American missionaries, who arrived yesterday from Jerusalem, via Piracus, in the Cunard liner Carpatia, said that the fall of the Dardanelles would probably mean a massacre of Jews and in the Holy Land.

The party, which consisted of Mr. and Mrs. A. E. Kelsey, Mrs. E. Meader, Miss F. Parson, M. Kelsey and Miss Alice Jones of Philadelphia, head of the Girls' Missionary School, maintained by the Society of Friends in Jerusalem, sailed from Jaffa for Piraeus on Jan. 29. According to Miss Jones and her fellow-travelers, the Jews are being cruelly treated in Jerusalem by Turkish officials. Hundreds of them have been forced to enter the army and send to Damascus to be drilled. Others, who were unfit physically to fight and undergo the hardships of a march across the desert towards Egypt, have been compelled to do all kinds of menial labor on the roads between Jerusalem and Jaffa.


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 05:02 AM

POLAND, SERBIA, ARMENIA


MARCH 25, 1915

The plans of Armenia awarm with fugitives fleeing from the Turk. All able-bodied men in Armenia have been dragged to Turkish battlefields, while in the show-clad highlands and valleys the women, the children, and the aged are dying of starvation by thousands.

Belgium still suffers. All the agencies of relief for that unhappy land have not sufficed, but they are well known. Relatively few know of the headquarters in this city of the Armenian Relief Fund, at 354 Fourth Avenue, or of the Polish Relief Fund at 265 Central Park West. The Red Cross Society with national headquarters in Washington, is doing all it can for Serbia, whither sanitary experts will soon set fourth to stamp out the plagues under the auspices of the Red Cross and the Rockfaller Foundation. But for Serbia, Poland, and Armenia more funds are urgently needed.


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 05:03 AM

TURKS RENEW MASSACRES


MARCH 22, 1915

Special Cable to THE YORK TIMES.

ATHENS, March 22, (Dispatch to the London Daily News.)-- Additional Christian massacres are reported from the neighborhood of Aivali, on the Annatolian coast north of Smyrna.

Sixty families in the village of Kimerly were massacred.


Public Radio of Armenia


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 05:04 AM

PILLAGE IN SMYRNA DISTRICT


APRIL 19, 1915

Special Cable to NEW YORK TIMES. MITYLENE, Friday, April 16, (dispatch to the London Daily News.)-- Merchants who arrived last night from Smyrna draw a gloomy picture of the state of things in the district surrounding that city. While Smyrna itself is quiet, pillage and murder are rife in the villages and smaller towns of the littoral, all Christians going in danger of their lives. At Vourla a Greek notable and others have been killed.

Large Turkish reinforcements arrived last week and defense works are being constructed with the utmost energy, particularly near Vourla. Several more German officers reached Smyrna a few days ago and have taken over the direction of defense preparation.


SYRACUSE, Sicily, (via Paris,) April 18.-- Travelers arriving her from Asia Minor say that bands of Mussulman brigands are committing all kinds of outrages in Smyrna, pillaging, burning property, killing and taking hostages.

The people bringing this reports say the Europeans in Smyrna urgently ask the assistance of the United States cruiser Tennessee, now in eastern waters, or any other forces or influence which America can exercise.


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Posted 12 April 2008 - 05:05 AM

TURKEY'S DREAM OF POWER


APRIL 18, 1915

Turkey dreams of regaining through the Austro-German alliance the position of world power, according to a Constantinople dispatch to the Frankfurter Zeitung, which contains excerpts from the address recently delivered Halli Bey, President of the Chamber of Deputies, to a procession of Turkish students. Halli Bey said:

"As a result of the weakness that made themselves felt in great number in the course of the centuries, our independence was not complete. Our internal independence was hampered in that our own forces and resources was subject to the guardianship of outsiders and was, whether by reason of treaties or the laws of habit, under their control. Similarly our foreign policies.

"We have deprived of the power of pursuing a firm policy toward the two groups of alliances and to govern the general political situation. We turned now toward one group, now toward other. As a result of their competitive rivalry we could not travel a straight course.

"Through the revocation of the capitulations we insured our internal as well as our external policies.

Following the lessons which history had taught us, and pressed by the demands of our geographical position, we concluded an alliance with the two groups, Germany and Austro-Hungary. From that day we have actually been a part of the world power. Thereby we attained our internal and external independence. May God grant that we may rise again to the greatness and glory of our earlier history."


New York Times





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