When Land Where You Lie Means Everything

[Azat]

By John Helmer

 

MOSCOW, May 2, 2001 -- (The Russia Journal) History is a dream for winners and losers alike. But nations that forget the difference don't keep their identities, and can wind up losing their people and their land.

 

The Turkish ambassador to Moscow was saying this week that it is time for everyone to put the history of enmity and warfare behind them, in order to build new friendships. He was speaking at the war memorial service commemorating ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Day.

 

At the same time, Russia's Foreign Ministry issued an official note reminding Turkey of the recent history of Turkish support for Chechen secession and terrorism. Referring to this week's attack on an Istanbul hotel by a group led by a Chechen who had commanded an earlier attack on a Russian ferry, the reminder from the Foreign Ministry noted that "more than once [the Russian government has] drawn the attention of Turkish officials to the possibility of such an act by extremist persons and groups on Turkish territory."

 

How very different things would have been if Count Pozzo di Borgo, Tsar Nicholas I's ambassador to Paris in September 1829, had realized his dream, and Russian forces at Adrianople had seized the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Opening the Black Sea to the Mediterranean was the objective of Russian policy then, to ensure the decaying Ottoman Empire didn't block Russian access by allying with Russia's enemies in Europe.

 

Had Russia taken the straits, there would have been no need for the Australians and New Zealanders to land at Gallipoli on ANZAC Day, April 25, 1915, to try to open the channel to Tsar Nicholas II. The Gallipoli campaign some say a devious, some say a stupid plan by Winston Churchill caused huge casualties among the ANZAC forces, which were eventually forced to withdraw. ANZAC Day for Australians and New Zealanders ever since has been a celebration, not of military defeat, but of national identity.

 

It wasn't the first war the ANZAC forces fought under British command. The Boer War in South Africa came first, 16 years earlier. But ANZAC Day was the beginning of Australian and New Zealand resistance to spending blood and money on imperial adventures decided in London.

 

For about a decade now, there has been a sentiment in Australia and New Zealand that although the Turks were the enemy at Gallipoli, they should be included in ANZAC Day ceremonies to symbolize what some call the healing process, and what the Turkish ambassador calls friendship.

 

Consequently, in Moscow this week, the ANZAC representatives invited the Turkish ambassador to give a speech. He repeated the words of Kemal Ataturk, the army officer who took over Turkey at the end of World War I. "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country," Ataturk had said. "Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us here. They lie side by side here in this country of ours."

 

Ataturk was addressing the British Empire alliance when he said those words. His aim was exactly the same as that of the Ottoman sultan when Russian guns could be heard in Constantinople in 1829. The important words for Ataturk were those defining as Turkish the land the ANZACS had fallen upon; to ensure that Britain and her allies would not support the claims of the Greeks, the Armenians, the Arabs and the Kurds to lands that were as rightfully theirs as any Turk's.

 

Was it sorrow, or were they crocodile tears that Ataturk was shedding for the Australian and New Zealand Johnnies? Time would quickly tell. For the Greeks massacred or driven out of western Thrace, and for the Armenians driven to a genocide-sized death between 1915 and 1923, Ataturk meant only one thing. He intended, and he accomplished, the modern world's largest ethnic cleansing until Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini arrived to beat the record. But Ataturk had the endorsement of Britain for the same anti-Russian reason that had prevailed at the Treaty of Adrianople in 1830.

 

Why exactly should Australians and New Zealanders dream a different history? And why in Moscow of all places? What exactly has changed, and what wounds are left unhealed? The present Turkish government, like its predecessors, is the only ally of the Western powers to be occupying foreign territory in violation of United Nations resolutions. That territory belongs to Cyprus, which the Turks invaded in 1974 and have armed and populated with mercenaries ever since.

 

Turkey continues to hold Syrian and Iraqi territory by force of arms. It conducts a war against the Kurdish people. It refuses to acknowledge, let alone apologize for the destruction of the Armenians.

 

And, as the Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out again this week, Turkish intelligence, Turkish arms, and Turkish money have been backing the rebellion in Chechnya, assisting in well-known hijackings of sea and air transport before the latest hotel takeover.

 

If Australians and New Zealanders are right to regard ANZAC Day as a defining point in their history defining more sharply their position toward London than toward Constantinople they should be more sensitive about what the healing process means for others who are still fighting against Turkey.

 

In the history that Russians dream, it's necessary to realize there are differences between Johnnies and Mehmets. The land where they lie can mean everything.

 

 

©2001 The Russia Journal