FULCRUM UPON WHICH ISSUE SITS

[Guest Fadi]

Thoth, the Ottoman havnt lost their war... they won that war... yes technically we can call it a defeat... but pratically they won...

 

The Balkans were already lost, the Arabic soil was expected to be already broken(more then 6 million Arabs to manage, near the entire Turkish population in the empire)... their plan was to expend in the East, and Russian plan was to block Ottoman expention plan, and maybe expend themselves using the war as a pretext...

 

Now who won who lost ? All the territories that was lost from the Ottoman after 1915 were expected to be lost... on the other hand Ottoman took a part of Russian Armenia, Kars and bordering were taken by pacts etc... their plan was to do away with the minority problem, and one of the main aim of the war was this... they succeded, they planned top build a Turkish Nationhome... they did... pratically all what was wanted succeded...

 

Who call this a defeat ? Calling it a defeat is ignoring Ottoman aim of the war... No Armenian in Turkey, and it was what was wanted, the nationalisation of the economy, the abolition of the milleti system, one identity "Turk" everything other then the "Pan-Turanism" succeded, and even more then expected. Ataturk had the same goals as the Young-Turks had, not surprising he was a Young-Turk, and it was also the Kemalists that destroied what was left of the Armenian population, they broked Armenia to pieces, when the devided territories and comploted with the Bolshevics, to take off Karabagh, Nachikevan and give then to Azerbaijan, and nortern Armenia to Georgia... in the ultimate plan to annihilate any possibility that Armenia could one day be independent, every alleged Ataturk worry of Armenian massacres were idiotry and hypocrasy to cool down the allies, Ataturk was not better then Talaat in that respect, and worshiping him as a god in Turkey is an example of the Turkish identity crises... Stalin was Great, Hitler also was Great, "Great" dosnt mean good.

 

I hate more Ataturk then I hate Talaat, because Talaat was responsable of the eradication, Ataturk was responsable of the eradication of the survivers the orphans that were taken care in the newly formed republic, that the kemalist sent their troups to kill them in mass... Alexendriopole, where from Russian statistics more then 80 % of the population that was left aged less then 12 years old... killed and killed... Ataturk then with his bloody hand planned the evacuation of the Kurds from the East to deport them in the West specifically chosing to do it in winter, from at the exterem east they were supposed to be "relocated" in Smyrna... happy the survivers, because there was pratically none...

 

Then Ataturk historical compagny that formed the bases of the denialism machine that exist untill now... and what angers me the most is that him unlike Talaat is seen as a good leader etc... when with Talaat at least we see them as evil, even from the Turks(in an extent since he has his own monument in the Hill of liberty).

 

I may offense the Turks, but in my mind Ataturk was just a megalomaniac alcholic, with bloody hands.

 

[ May 16, 2002, 12:02 PM: Message edited by: Domino ]

[aurguplu]

Domino,

 

i was not expecting this to turn into an attack and defense of ataturk, but as i can see our opinions regarding ataturk differ strongly.

 

allow me to voice my objections:

 

first, as stated before, mustafa kemal had inherited a situation and not created one.

 

second, the war against the armenians in the east was fought mainly by kazım karabekir, and to call it ataturk's minion shows - apologies - that you perhaps need to read a little bit more on kazım karabekir and mustafa kemal (Domino i don't intend to offend). now this reading business is important, especially for those of you who can read turkish, because you will - just like the turks - fall into the trap of believing that the "istiklal harbimiz" of kazım karabekir that you buy at any shop in turkey is what he really wrote. well, it isn't, actually. you have to get your hands on the first edition, which was collected from circulation soon after it was published, and the sanitized version appeared a good deal later. i had first bought the second edition (which has the same dimensions, format, and cover, and only a tiny note somewhere thta it is the second edition), and had only read a few pages before i could get a copy of the first edition, and my second edition copy is in a box waiting to be sold now.

 

the bad news concerning the first edition is that the language is the old style, orthography and punctuation are not amongst his strongest points, nor is -apparently - grammar, bt it is obviously a most candid portrayal of what transpired as he saw and understood it. by the way, the armenians mostly appear within the russian context. i think it would be a very sobering - if not agreeable - reading for both turks and armenians, but BEWARE guys, the first edition.

 

another point about the first edition is that it is kind of difficult to get hold of and the damn thing is a collector's item now with a pretty massive (for me at least) price tag at over USD 100. and then you have to make sure that all the thousand odd pages are actually there (they aren't always).

 

i haven't finished reading istiklal harbimiz, but the impression that i got from the passages that i read is that the armenians appear as a very belligerent lot and almost constantly in military connection with russia and secondarily with the western powers. i do not want to hurt armenian national pride, but the prevailing turkish attitude has always been that the real enemies were the great powers and russia, with the armenians only being used as a tool. many of the heroes of the independence war are known for having expressed privately their sorrow for what happened to the hapless common folk, but they were also quick to point out that the blame largely fell to their leaders who lead them to disaster with their short-sighed and unrealisable policies. of course one could ask whether there was no way to separate wheat from chaff, but one must not forget that we could ask that qustion today, as we are sitting in our armcahirs in the security of our respective lands with internationally recognised borders and no imminent threat to our very existence in sight. the situation then was rather different, and a lot of rough justice was inevitably done.

 

as for you hating ataturk more than talat, i again think you have to raed a bit more about him. this is the man who said of the fallen in gallipoli "mothers of children who fell here, don't cry, for they are now sleeping in the bosom of a friendly nation", and this is the man who had lifted the greek flag that was put underneath his feet to be trampled upon by him as he entered izmir victoriously, saying that "the flag is the honour of a nation, you do not have the right to trample upon it". i had heard from an istanbul armenian whose family was originally from tokat, that one morning the entire armenian community of some squalid tokat village they came from was summoned by the muhtar who said to them "tomorrow morning i shall not see any one of you here". so the entire community packs and boards a train to istanbul where they have relatives. at the interim stop in ankara, ataturk sees them at the train station and understands from their condition that all was not well with them, so he asks what is going on. they relate the story, upon which ataturk tells them "go back to your village, and tell that guy that if he molests you again i shall personally nail him from his ears onto the door of his office".

 

also do not forget that he is reported in a los angeles times issue of 1926 - in an interview with a swiss reporter - to have said that "these remnants of the union and progress patry should be made accountable for the millions of lives of our christian citizens".

 

Domino, as i have said, i can understand and symphatise with your hatred of turks in general and some turks in particular (though i must hasten to add that hate is not a healthy feeling, and will ultimately hurt you), but don't you think that you should know mustafa kemal a bit better before passing judgement on him? i think that your hate of him - in your words even greater than your hate of talat ***** - is misplaced.

 

i can understand that we both, being parties by dint of heredity to this troubled past, can frequently find it rather difficult to separate our personal feelings from the cold truth before us, but it is the one thing we must do, for only by approaching the problem in this manner are we going to be able to solve the problem.

 

more on this - and other points - later, i gotta get back to work now.

 

cheers,

[Guest Fadi]

Ali

 

If Karabaekir memoirs are as "good" as Talaat one, then I don't need to read it. I suggest you to read the Armenian genocide in Turkish sources by Dadrian, or if you can't find it just tell it to me, I will send you an attach of the PDF in your email account.

 

Memoirs of Turkish officials are as credible as a child story taking his night dreams to reality because he still dosnt know what is the difference between reality and dreams.

 

For example Talaat memoirs were forged to the core, the author of his biography to the invitation of the editors of "Son Havadis" was asked to prove that Talaat memoirs were autentic, he declined probably knowing that Dr. B. Sakir "screened them" it was also recorded in German archive "Stchtung der Memoiren Talaat Pascha (Politische Abteilung III/Türkei PO 11 No. 3, File 1), communicated to the German Foreign Office on May 21, 1921. After the war, and the disolution by the Kemalists of the Turkish tribunal a real kind of "Gestapo" police was institutionalised to erase any left traces of the genocide from public record, manipulations of memoirs were done before their publication(Talaat one was an example like reported by the Germans).

 

So I do not give any credibility over an alleged memoir from Karabekir, if the editor of the new edition(the one alive I suppose) is able to prove what the Biograph of Talaat was not able... that these files were not touched by the Post Tribunal Special police, like they have done with the majority of the files that were supposed to be made public, like memoirs.

 

But even then Ali, I have presented you quotations from Karabekir memoir in the past asking the eternel destruction of Armenia. Facts speak more then words, karabekir with the help of Halil the megalomaniac started a purge in what was left of the Armenians in the newly formed republic, Ataturk allegedly reporting that he feared massacres against Armenians was simple hypocrasy for Western consuption. And his interview in 1926, I suggest you to read the totality and you will understand what was the prime aim, Ataturk accused the Young-Turks to show to the world he was different, that he was an enemy of that previous system, but in practice his regime was in no way different, he consumed the genocide, he redirected the millions of German gold marks, the product of the genocide, and used for the construction of the republic, his palls, in the first presentation of the assembly in the preparation of the Treaty of Lausanne presented the first Article, Art. 1 "Every right given in any times to the minorities are entirly abolished..." It was with that at hand, that his pall Orbay, the first prime minister that was present for the signature of the Treaty of Lausanne was one of the close friend of Enver *****, and like the brits reported, was also one of the responsable of the destruction of the files.

 

Ataturk has chosen the most bloody people to form his new republic, I can give you dozens of names as the chief planners of the extermination, he has chosen them because he wanted them. Its like after the dead of Hitler a new Chanselor would have chosen Himmler and other chief organiser of the Holocaust, would you say this man was different ? And what about how he killed the Kurdish identity ? How he deported entire population from East to West, specifically in Winter ?

 

After all this, what makes him any different then Talaat, other then the state institutionalisation of the denialist machine, the Ataturk history compagny etc... the coverup ? Was he different ? If different he was, then what he havnt done that Talaat did... in the other way, he has done more then Talaat, not only he finished genocide that was started, he started the historical genocide, he consupmed this genocide and used it to keep his power, he used the most powerfull and bloody psychopaths to enter this new republic in a said "modern" world, with the militaristic system, Turkey now being the 6st more armed nation on the world with 65 million habitant.

 

How Turkey is changing Ali ? I had these believes in the past these hopes, but just taking a look how this government react, like a little child, Iran in these 2 decades changed more then Turkey in its 80 years of existance. Its not to the Armenians to do the first move, we have hopped for more then 80 years, to see ourselves called dogs in Turkish press, our worst period as a so-called event that us Armenians were responsable, killing millions of Muslim etc... I do not want to do stereotypisation here, but we are more 'cool" then the Jews here, one or two sites opens now about the denial of the Holocaust, most of them will last less then 6 monts, revisionism.com has been closed, the half of the sites that I saved 5 months ago are gone, someone just try to question one aspect of the Holocaust, and he is compared to Flaurisson, now we Armenians, its not enough that they question aspects, but they turn the victims as agressors. I just wonder what Jews would do if their genocide was denied like ours is.

 

Yes I hate Ataturk, he was the responsable of these taboos, he was reponsable of the state sponsered denialism, to keep the Turks blind, to keep them ignorent of their own history. Give me just one reason that I should not hate him, just one reason, after all he did, after he comploted with the Bolshevics to broke Armenia, after his army drove the last survivers of the east. This same man is glorified his pictures are everywhere, he is seen as a god... when the heads of the genocide have schools of their names, monuments of their names, streets of their names.

 

Now give me one reason that I should not hate Ataturk...

 

And do you know the best, I have read in the Globe&mail, a Movie Critic by the name of Ray Conlogue(this same guy in everyone of his articles show himself, specialist of this or that) proclaming himself specialist and thinks he has enough knowledge to talk about the subject, enough knowledge after that he interviewed some Turks, I wonder what the Jews will do, if before a move is screened about the Holocaust some Movie critic go and interview some Irvings and then after this thinks they know enough to talk about the subject.

 

[ May 17, 2002, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: Domino ]

[bellthecat]

Ali, I am interested in a passage in Karabekir's memoirs where he mentions instructions he got to destroy Armenian monuments at Ani, from a Dr Riza Nur in a letter dated 25th May 1921 - there is a short reference to it in one of Dadrian's footnotes, but Dadrian does not eloborate on it in depth (and he has not read the original edition).

 

Dadrians reference is: "Istiklal Harbimiz" Istanbul 1969, p905.

 

Is there anything about this event in the original edition you own?

 

And what position did Riza Nur have in the Turkish government (All I know is that he was the deputy-head of the Turkish representatives at the Lausanne confence).

 

Thanks

 

Steve

[Guest Fadi]

Yes in fact, I saw also this foote note from his work concerning the Implication of the physicians in the genocide I think.

 

I also tried to find more without success.

[bellthecat]

Domino, I think you may be unjustified in dismissing Karabekir's writings - after all, as you yourself admitted, Dadrian mentions him many times in his footnotes and sources.

 

In the 1920s Karabekir narrowly escaped being murdered by Ataturk. (After discovering an assasination plot, Ataturk did a "september 11th" and decided to destroy his potentual enemies and rivals by falsely accusing them of being complicit in the plot). Karabekir was forced to retire from public life and he spent much of the remainder of his life writing his memoirs - although he is hardly likely to openly implicate himself or Turkey in genocide he did not have a reason to censor himself when writing about smaller, individual, incidents.

 

Steve

[bellthecat]

Yep - for those that are interested it is footnote 82, p192, in "The role of Turkish physicians in the World War 1 genocide of Ottoman Armenians" an article in "Holocaust and Genocide Studies", volume 1, 1986.

[Guest Fadi]

Steve, Has his memoire not been published after his death ? And after 1920 ? Everything after that for me is not credible.

 

You are right Dadrian quote him, but Dadrian also quote Kutay, when he question his references concerning the so-called Talaat memoirs. No ?

[aurguplu]

Domino, if you are referring to cemal kutay, please note that he is generally not regarded as a serious historian by anyone, turk or non-turk alike.

 

since i am posting this from the office, i do not have my references with me, but i will look up the karabekir stuff.

 

as for karabekir's memoirs not containing anything about the genocide, there is plenty of stuff regarding mutual killings (and remember that karabekir was stationed elsewhere during the genocide in 1915-1916, so he could not have taken an active part in it.

 

now as i had stated earlier, there are references to "the plight of the armenians" in relative abundance in literary works, memoirs etc. of the earlier republican period, so i still keep wondering what the scale of the destruction of records re the genocide was. after all, a man no less than falih rıfkı atay (sort of court biographer of ataturk) made references to what was happening to the armenians in his novel zeytindağı (mount of olives), where he mentions an ottoman ***** telling him that they were recruiting convicts from prisons for "that job" (what the job is is never explicitly mentioned, but it would have been taken for granted by the readers of the time).

 

i think that they were more concerned with erasing records referring to the ties of specific persons to specific war crimes, but i wonder whether they were trying to erase the record of genocide per se. after all, virtually the totality of anatolia was subject to the deportations, and the entire nation saw the armenians go and not come back. how can you erase this?

 

as for your hatred of ataturk, it may be a bit futile to engage in this much further, as i can understand your opinion of him is set, but i fear my message of him having inherited a situation as opposed to creating one has been missed.

 

i will check the karabekir memoirs for the p. 905 reference, and yes, i woud be pleased if you could send me the dardrian stuff in pdf format (at the moment i am getting prepared for marriage and have to count my pennies).

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

Domino,

 

i forgot to give you the e-mail: aurguplu@yahoo.com

 

thanks in advance,

 

yours,

 

ali suat

[aurguplu]

dear steve,

 

i checked my copy of karabekir (printed 1959-1960, nebioğlu yayınevi copy no 661) this lunch break (i live walking distance from work). there is something completely different on page 905 and i have to go through the entire volume. well, almost, as the thing is more or less in chronological order.

 

as i have said i have not read the thing in its entirety yet, but it would be a very thought-provoking read for anyone interested in that segment of history, tuk and non-turk alike.

 

his memoirs were kept in his family after he passed away in 194?, and they waited for a decent moment to publish them (by then ataturk was dead, inönü was voted out of office for ten years, and the centre-right democrat party was living its most corrupt days). to me the memoirs have so far shown no trace of "editing": there appears to be mention of everything that he encountered, obviously from the perspective of a turkish soldier who took part in the struggle, andit has the drab, matter-of-fact style of a soldier, down to a turkish that needs some editing and a horrible orthography (karabekir was known to have opposed the script reform).

 

also, i must admit that i am more than a bit disappointed with dadrian if he really used anything other than the original edition. it is a matter of course that in scholarly works you use original editions of your primary sources and not later ones, unless these later editions have some merit that the first ones do not contain. in such a controversial subject as the one we are discussing, i cannot accept anything other than information derived from original sources.

 

cheers,

[Guest Fadi]

Ali, Dadrian is known to use orginal versions.

 

Sorry don<t have much time to treat the topic, just to tell you that I am not able to do the attach of the file, must be because its 7.5 mb.

 

I'll see if I can email you a place to load it.

[bellthecat]

Then why doesn't he cite the original in any of his references - after all, for the average non-Turkish reader the later editions will be just as hard to come by as the original?

[Guest Fadi]

Ask it to him.

 

Steve, the newer edition would not add new stuff that the old had not, when these stuff are against the government position. Would it ?

 

As the new edition vs the old one. yes it is harder to get the orginal edition for non-Turks, you can still contact the Turkish embassy, to know how to order these works, you will only be able to order the new editions, not the old ones.

[bellthecat]

Thank you Ali.

 

I'm interested if Karabekir says that there was actual destruction done, or if it didn't get further than a request from Ankara. I think there probably was destruction as almost all traces of the Russian excavations have vanished, including sections of buildings. But I wonder if it was done to remove evidence of Armenian presence in Turkish territory or remove a reason for Armenians to have an interest in that territory.

 

Steve

[bellthecat]

Which is why the older one should have been the one Dadrian consulted. But since he gives page numbers for later editions he could not have actually done so. Perhaps he did not know there was a difference in the various editions, I didn't until Ali told me.

[Guest Fadi]

I do not think it could have anything to do with erasing Armenian presence, erasing Armenian presence was planned years after.

[aurguplu]

ok guys

 

last night i checked the entire table of contents of the first edition of karabekir's istiklal harbimiz. first: there is no letter by dr. rıza nur relating to ani or anything else. his name simply doesn't appear in the table of contents. second: there are references to ani ruins and its significance to the armenians, by a letter from an armenian commander, and that these lands should be ceded to armenia on these grounds, which karabekir flatly refuses.

 

meanwhile, i strongly suggest that the armenian side read these memoirs - in the original of course - there is much that they will find a bit hard to stomach, but it is a very thought-provoking and informative reading.

 

and i repeat if dadrian used the second edition instead of the first without giving adequate explanation for this choice of editions (or simple oversight) then this is a very serious blow to his reputation as a historian in my opinion and i stick to it.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

i forgot to add:

 

the first edition has no index, so you have to plough through the thousand-odd pages to find what you are looking for if it is not mentioned in the table of contents.

 

cheers,

[bellthecat]

That is what I am presuming - that began to happen later, starting in the 1950s and 60s.

 

Dadrian says Nur ordered that "the monuments of Ani be wiped off the face of the earth" saying that he (Karabekir) would "be rendering a great service to Turkey when you accomplish this goal".

 

Obviously, the monuments of Ani were not "wiped off the face of the earth" but all traces of the Russian period excavations do seem to have been destroyed, presumably to remove any reason for Soviet archeologists to want to visit Ani.

 

Dadrian, presumably going by what Karabekir writes, says that Nur's letter was sent in response to suspicions that soviet historians were spying on the Turks by pretending to study the ruins of Ani. However, this is not a credible reason as there would have been nothing to "spy" on - there is no strategic value to Ani, and there are and never have been any Turkish bases, etc, at or near Ani. Either the Turks had reverted to a society in which culture and history meant nothing and where anyone with the inexplicable wish to study such things obviously had to be doing something ilicit, or, like I said, they really they were just trying to remove legitimate reasons for Armenians to be within Turkish controlled territory.

 

The second is probably the true reason, but the first is not impossible - to this day most Kurds in eastern Turkey are incapable of grasping the concept of someone being interested in an historical monument for its own sake. In their eyes you must be there to try and find the vast amounts of treasure that every Kurd (of whatever degree of education) seem to be genetically pre-programmed to believe lies under every old building.

 

Steve

[aurguplu]

is anyone familiar with the memoirs of rıza nur (again, the original version). dr. rıza nur had to flee turkey for having insulted ataturk (or something like that), and as far as i know he published his memoirs there. i have not read them, so cannot judge, but we have been talking about this letter business in dadrian, and the thing does not appear to be in the original edition of karabekir. does anyone know whether dr. rıza nur makes a reference to it in his memoirs or other stuff?

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

one more thing:

 

about this trace wiping off business: there is still a good number of armenian monuments here and there (even though they are usually - not always- labelled under different names) and some of them (especially akhtamar) seem to be in quite good shape (better shape than some seljuk monuments nearby, actually). if there really was such a policy, how come they are still standing?

 

cheers,

[Guest Fadi]

Sorry Ali, I do not ignore you on purpouses... I have to finish a work for now, and my head is to occupied to use the left side of my brain to write on those boards.

[aurguplu]

hi everyone

 

last night i found dr. rıza nur's letter to kazım karabekir and karabekir's reply to it. nur indeed proposes that ani be destroyed, which karabekir rejects on the following grounds:

 

1. ani ruins are vast, like the walls of istanbul, and even if they were destroyed - which in itself is no mean feat - they would still remain as ruins on the same spot.

 

2. the destruction of ani ruins would be more likely to stir up sentimen amongst the armenian religious community than to quench it.

 

the tone of his reply to nur's suggestion read as dismissive in the original memoirs.

 

the material is found between pages 960-970 (i think the reply was on page 969) in the original edition.

 

by the way, the original edition was from türkiye yayınevi and not nebioğlu yayınevi. apologies.

 

the second edition (1988) that i have is from merk yayınevi. its language is simplified (documents are left in the original language), headings are given to "chapters", and it contains biographies of prominent persons of the period, but there still is no index.

 

but still, i would consult the original edition.

 

cheers,

[bellthecat]

Not really Ali, there is almost nothing left.

 

Obviously a lot of the destruction is as a result of 85 years of decay, or expanding urban development, or people taking away stone for re-use, but a lot is deliberate.

 

For instance, name me a single town or city (except Istanbul) that still has a pre-1915 Armenian graveyard - they have ALL been deliberately destroyed.

 

Most Armenian building inscriptions on houses or on fountains have also been destroyed. If you see an old fountain with an empty square hollow in the masonry, that will have been where an Armenian inscription would have been - you can see this everywhere in Turkey.

 

The most well known destruction of a church was the demolition using explosives of the monastery of Khtzkonk. It was destroyed by the Turkish army in the late 1950s. Today, the villagers there are a bit hazy on the actual date of destruction (they say it was in the 1970s) but still confirm its destruction was caused by the army.

 

Achtamar was protected because it is on an island - but of the famous monastery of Narek that was only a few miles away, not a stone remains. (And 3 or 4 years ago even Achtamar was attacked by someone using a pickaxe).

 

Its not even confined to Turkish territory - in the mid-1980s a Turkish army unit crossed the border into Syria to destroy an Armenian church in Kessab - their commander didn't like it that an Armenian church was visible from Turkey!

 

Steve