Genocide

[Guest]

Ali,

I live in Turkey too and i want to tell a few people i know.

My sister had a friend from northern Anatolia whose grandmother was a greek but a muslim,getting angry with her grandsons questions like'Grandmom how did you become muslim' or about her past.If you could see her you would think she's the granddaughter of Mohammed.She does hate her Christian days.

I had a friend in University from Hemshin.She told me they were speaking Armenian at home but she was getting really mad when i was telling her'you may be muslim but you're Armenian'

Or as you said,the former of MHP(Nationalist Movement Party) or Turgut Ozal's mother(who dided as a radical muslim) was an Armenian born in Malatya....There are many other people our elders tell us..

I had a friend,when she learned i'm an Armenian(because i have a Turkish name) gave me a secret to keep..Guess what,she told her grandmother was an Armenian from Sivas...

There are much more examples,because there are many Armenians survived from the genocide,lived hiding,that neither the Turks nor the Armenians would believe.Some were assimilated,some became muslim,some were grown and married with Turks,but still there is a great Armenian population hiding(especially in the eastern region of Turkey)

There is a great mistake Ataturk made.In Ottomans,as you said,there was'ummet(nation based upon his religion)'.Trying to buid a laic republic he had to convert 'ummet to millet(nation based upon his ancestral race).All the muslim ethnicities except Kurds and some Arabs accepted this new ideology and the people began to call themself as Turks(during Ottomans only the nomads were called Turks as an insulting word).I think seeing an Armenian as the head of the fascist party of Turkey is a result of this,'If you want to be a first class citizen,the christians must first become muslim than call himself a Turk.If you're a muslim,it's easier,just call yourself Turk.'

[Hakob]

Mr. Ali suat,

 

Your views are informative. I just want to comment on the Uigurs part, as I have once studied these people. They, like the Anatolian Turks, are not really Turks if you go into the genetics of direct descent. Instead, they are an amalgamation of various groups (Tocharians, Sogdians, Han Chinese, Iranians as well Turko-Mongols). SOme of them like the ones living in the Kucha oasis town, are recently found to be actually descended from the local Indo-Iranian population as well as Han Chinese ex-convicts exiled there during the Han and Tang Dynasties 1,000 years ago. Very little of Kazak/Mongol X chromosomes (DNA passed from father side) was found among them. Instead there was mainly Iranian with a sizeable Han Chinese in the X chromosomes, while the mitochondria (passed only through mothers side) was totally Iranian. But, these people speak Uigur, which is a Turkish dialect. Languages does not imply race, as here in United States people of all races speak or only speak English, a Germanic Indo-Aryan language. It is said that even when the Mongols conquered this region, not everyone was speaking Uigur. Some maintained their Aryan speech (which is similar to Tajiki). In fact, there is a pocket of Iranian speakers among the Uigurs today in and near Kashgar. They go by the tribal name "Aynu." And, it is believed that the speech of this group was the original speech of all the oasis people in the Tarim Basin. It is said this region really only completely Turkified and Islamified due to Tamerlane's conquest. But, you are right that the Mongols in Iran relied on their expertise. At their court, can be found many Uigurs and Chinese administrators, tax collectors, doctors, artists, and scientists who replaced the exterminated Muslims. Just wonder where the Asian faces in Iranian and Turkish art came from? And, the term "Uigur" was not in use until the Soviets devised this term for them in the late 1930s. Before, it was considered a word of degradation or insult. It literally meant ignorant barbarian. And, people only identified the region or city of origin (i.e. Kashgarlik, Tufanlik, Hotanlik, Kuchalik, Yarkandlik, etc.).

[shiner]

I don't mean to get involved in this because I have no knowledge of the subject, but I just wanted to say that the X chromosomes can be passed by the mother as well as the father. Females are XX and males are XY. Each passes just one of their chromosomes to their offspring. Thus females can only pass the X chromosome, while males can either pass the X or the Y. If the offspring ends up being XX it is a female, if it ends up being XY it is a male. Thus the male determines the sex of the offspring (since only the male can pass either the X or Y, while the female just passes the X).

[Pilafhead]

Martin, Levon & Ali,

 

Please keep this discussion going. Very interesting and facinating.

[aurguplu]

Dear Hakob,

 

To talk about Turks in genetic terms is like talking about Americans in genetic terms. As a French historian put it “he who speaks Turkish is Turkish”. I think this is the most logical approach we can have to define the Turkish identity (I particularly favour it because I am part Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Albanian, Hittite, Serb, Bosnian, Circassian, Georgian, Crimean Tatar and God knows what else, and would probably classify as anything other than a Turk on genetic grounds, but I consider myself Turkish).

 

This is the case not only with Turks, but with many other nations, too: millions of people of Mongol appearance who are known to be the descendants of the hordes of Turks and Mongols who overran Russia in the 13th-14th Centuries now consider themselves Russian and have every right to do so. You don’t have to look any further than Lenin.

 

“Turk” always seems to have had a political rather than ethnic connotation, and now some people of Turkic origin (i.e. Turkic speakers) gave their name to countries and places that are not Turkic today (e.g. Bulgaria, the original Bulgars were a Turkic-speaking nation, closely related to the Huns and present-day Chuvash in Russia, but the Bulgarians today, who bear their name, are Slavs in speech and culture who had assimilated them by the 12th Century), then nations whom we know were not Turkic were sometimes called Turks (most notably the Hungarians (Magyars) who had moved to present-day Hungary from around the Ural mountains before the 9th Century, as a part of a Turkish confederation. The name “Hungary” is Turkic and probably means “Ten Tribes”.). The Mongols, who started the disturbances in Central Asia and caused the displacement of tribes, were largely assimilated into the more numerous Turks linguistically, hence the Mongol appearance of Central Asian Turks east of Iran today (Early Chinese sources describe some people whom we know spoke Turkish as red-haired, green eyed, monkey-like people, i.e. Europeans). Central Asia marks the border between the Caucasian and Mongol races, and it is evident that much mingling and assimilation took place there since time began. You can never talk about any period of Turkic history where there is at least not one documented case of linguistic assimilation and/or mixed marriages (we also use the institution of marriage as a means of settlement of disputes, so after every clash with any nation, mixed marriages did inevitably occur).

 

As to the Asiatic faces in Turkish and Persian art: Islamic miniature painting has some of its origins in – guess where? – Tibet! It was an art that never tired of clichés, and Turks continued to paint themselves as broad faced, slanted eyed Asiatics long after they ceased to look like that, and the few famous examples of Ottoman miniature painting that I can think of that deviate from this rule are the portraits of Mohammed the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent. That of Mohammed the Conqueror was based on Bellini’s work, and that of Suleiman the Magnificent probably on another western depiction of him. My interpretation is that these people looked so very obviously different from the clichés that the painters were forced to make some concessions, and of course, western influence was also a factor. We painted Arabs with slanted eyes, for God’s sake!

 

An addition to Hakob’s point re Turkish genetics: according to legend, there were twenty-four Oghuz tribes that came to Anatolia, some twenty-two names are easily recoverable from place names (that of my mother’s original tribe, Kayý (pronounced Qyeh), is the most numerous). Two of these twenty-four names are known to be not Turkic in origin: these are Yazýr (originally As-er, meaning “As-man”, the As were an Iranian tribe who the Greeks knew, incidentally, the continent name Asia comes from there and was extended to the name of the whole continent much later.), the other Döger (originally Tokhar, the Indo-European nation that you are talking about). Remember these are the two names that we know are not originally Turkic, there may be a few others of dubious etymology that may also be of non-Turkic origin, too.).

 

This is another thing that neither Turks nor their neighbours know much about: most people are apt to equate the arrival of the Central Asians with the arrival of the Turks, but these “Turks” 1) were called Turks because the Arabs had met Turks who had called themselves as such a few centuries before, and applied the same name to all nomadic archers regardless of their ethnic origin, so the Mongols ended up as Turks in Arabic historiography, pretty much like the Magyars who had suffered the same fate(!) at the hands of the Byzantine historians.) 2) were already an amalgam of Paleosiberians, northern Chinese, Mongols, Manchu, Tungus, Tibetans, Tokharians, Sogdians and other Iranians, Jews, Slavs, Scandinavians (Swedes), Goths, and God knows what else, in addition to a few Turks, and, last by not least, the “Turks” who arrived in Anatolia called themselves Oghuz rather than Turks, and were always a most unruly element in the Turkish confederations. There are tiny differences between the Oghuz dialects and Turkic proper (ancestors of Uzbek and Uighur) like Grabar in Istanbul and Krapart in Yerevan, but these were so much blown out of proportion that one can very occasionally see in the writings of the 11th-12th Centuries Oghuz and Turkic considered different languages. Similar things, of course, can be seen in Europe, too: there is a reason why Germans are called German in English, Deutsch in German, Allemand in French and Saksa in Finnish!

 

Dear Levon,

 

Ataturk was a pragmatist: he had a mass of people who by and large had only two things in common, both of which Ataturk was the sworn enemy of: an Ottoman past and Islam. So he couldn’t use either in nation making: common values are like a glue that hold different parts of a nation together, and if you don’t have enough to do the job, you have to invent some, or elevate other things to the status of common values. The myth of forty Centuries of Turkish Anatolia (which made instant Turks out of the Indo-European Hittites and the mysterious Sumerians, whose language admittedly bears some resemblance to Turkic), was one such, a common origin of Anatolian Turks was another, and the forced imposition of Turkish to non-Turks (most famously as we all know to Kurds) was yet another. Remember that Ataturk was a soldier turned politician (and proved brilliant in both), and to him truth was a matter of debate for scholars, philosophers and people so inclined, of which he was neither. He needed “facts” to serve his purpose of making a whole out of many different parts. May I add that by and large he seems to have succeded.

 

So I would probably challenge the view that what Ataturk did was a mistake: he had the formidable task of making a nation out of a people whose ethnic identities were multiple, whose nationhood was never allowed to develop under the Ottoman Empire, who spoke different languages (the household language of one of the Defence Ministers of Ataturk's period was Bulgarian), and whose only bonds were an Empire that was gone and a religion deliberately kept well away from any reformist movement both by the Arabs and the Ottomans. What else could he do?

 

Dear Martin,

 

I hold an M.A. in Oriental Studies from Pembroke College, Oxford (England). I couldn’t continue my academic career in Turkey for reasons that must be clear by now, and frankly speaking I don’t much regret it: one of the things that made me sit next to the way out was the use of “Armenian” as an insult in a political discussion about Ismet Inonu. I am not a friend of Armenians, nor I am an enemy of them, I am sure they are no different from anyone else in that they have good people and bad, dishonest and honest, cowards and heroes, and I cannot associate with people who use a nation’s name as a swearword.

 

By the way, one mistake you made in one of your past contributions: you said you guys have been living in Anatolia for 2,000 years. I beg to differ: you probably were part of the Sea Peoples who destroyed the Hittite Empire at around 1200 BC. There is a region called Moesia in Thrace, and Mysia in Anatolia, referring to the same ethnonym and clearly showing the eastward migration of an Indo-European people about 1200 BC, at about the time of the Trojan War. In fact, Greek history talks about the Phrygians moving into Anatolia from the Balkans at shortly before the Trojan war. The name of the Phrygians comes from “Bryg” and means “brigand”, this word in English comes ultimately from the same Indo-European root. The Phrygians were referred to as “Muski” by the Hittites, the identity of this with Mysian and Moesian is clear. Now a very interesting point: Herodotus describes Armenians as Phrygian colonists, and the Georgians call the Armenians “(Sa)mekhi”. Now Herodotus is not normally considered to be a reliable source, but the Georgian parallel is interesting.

 

If this were all we knew, we would be perfectly justified to pronounce the Armenians as Phrygians, but unfortunately history is not so simple: the Phrygian language has survived in writing, albeit in an ossified form and scant, formulaic remains, until the 3rd Century AD, and what little we know of the language still causes fierce debate amongst historical linguists: originally thought to be a member of the Hittite-Luwian subgroup of Indo-European, it is now commonly thought to be distantly related to the extinct Thraco-Dacian and probably Illyrian (whose only surviving member is Albanian), but the scant remains show a language very different from Armenian. This is probably for three reasons: the Phrygian that we know from the inscriptions was a dead liturgical language already by late Antiquity, and doesn’t reflect the subsequent developments of the spoken language, and Armenian was first written down by Movses of Khorene in the 5th Century AD (if I am not mistaken, I am again writing this from my office.). So there is a time-gap of about ten Centuries, during which time Armenian was very heavily influenced by Hittite, Iranian and the non-Indo European Urartu and other Caucasian languages. Armenian was so heavily influenced by these languages that its affiliation to the Indo-European was long a matter of dispute. Linguists had a hard time finding the correspondence between Armenian erku and English two, to cite just one example.

 

I think the most plausible explanation for this is that the ancestors of the Armenians probably spoke something close to Phrygian, if not Phrygian itself, and moved to Anatolia from the Balkans with them. The name “Phrygian” might have been an adjective (brigand) rather than an ethnonym, and the ethnonym might have been something like Myski. The development of Hye as the Armenian national name is another matter.

 

What all this boils down to is that you guys must have been here for about 3,200 years , and went through the same processes of displacement of the natives and gradual assimilation of and into them, and genetic mingling.

 

I think this has been long enough again. I am waiting for your comments, and then I shall write on.

 

Cheers,

 

Ali Suat

[MJ]

Dear Ali,

 

Let me start from a disclaimer - I am not a historian, and have never conducted professional research in the areas subject to discussions. However I share a lot of your methodologies in looking at the issues at hand.

 

On the subject of Phrygian and Balkan origin of Armenians, your claim is only partially true, I think. Much like you have described the Turkish origin as a conglomerate of multiple mingling and conversions of identities, which sounds to me pretty reasonable at least from the logical point of view, Armenian nation is also a result of such process. The Balkan origin of Armenians is attributable to only one of the three major tribes, the mutual assimilation of which has resulted in the establishment of Armenian ethnicity. These are the Armens. The other two tribes have been Nairis and Hyases. You might be aware that these are the foreigners who call as Armenians. We call ourselves Hai. In poetic literature we use the term Nairi to describe our lands. There is an opinion that Nairis were associated with the Urartian origin. The Haias tribe is associated with Haik, who we, following a legend by Movses of Khoren, consider to be the Patriarch of our nation. For whatever it is worth, Nairis and the Haiases are considered to be native to the lands subject to discussions.

 

The conventional historiography attributes the beginning of the formation of the Armenian nation to about 2000 BC, and its end to about 700 BC. That’s why I have used an approximate age of 2000 years before the arrival of Seldjuks.

 

However, I am strongly convinced that what we consider to be Armenian ethnos in our days is a result of much more complex and much more diverse mingling and assumptions of biological identities. I don’t believe in “pure” nations, and I think it is impossible to have them in the genetic sense of the word. I thing the only difference is that some nations have finished their formations earlier, and others have finished it later. Some may have mixed more than the others have. Additionally, according to the latest research in the area of genetics – as late as the year 2000, more than 90% of the people share the same DNA code- even those of different races.

 

Also, we have to understand that for Armenians, as well as for many others, these events have taken place so long ago, that it is very hard to trace a simple logic in them.

 

I am pretty indifferent to all these legends. I read them as nice stories, and discount them very significantly. To be open – I don’t even care about them. To me all the politisation of the formation of nations is ridiculously irrelevant.

 

And I think that in the issues subject to interest to us, the ancient history is totally irrelevant. The history, as some of us have claimed multiple times, is a creative science, and is in the hands of the winners. And it is also an instrument of justification of existence for the losers.

 

As I have said, I am pretty indifferent to the part of the ancient history, which supposedly is to define the origins of nations and their genealogy, with a presumption that this or that nation is native to this or that land. Any time I engage in such discussions, my brain switches off, and I start thinking on something more relevant or important.

 

What I think manifests nations and legitimate claims on their behalf is their ability of formation of independent statehoods, i.e. their ability of self-organization. Just the mere fact of existance of a distinct genetic pool, however arguable this distinction may be, in my mind doesn’t manifest a nation. The reason is we, human beings, are not just biological elements. What makes us distinct from other biological elements, like animals, is that we are also social elelments. The disucssions on the genealogy of people remind me discussions of the breed of some lower lavel species. I think this is not a proper form of identification.

 

We become nations through our ability of self-organization through social institutions that we establish, which results in the establishment of a specific cultural identity. The preservation of this cultural identity, and more importantly, its advancement and enhancement requires a framework of protection, which with some exceptions, may be achieved only through a sovereign statehood.

 

This is perhaps why my interests in history are confined to its political dimension, as well as to the history of cultural evolution and philosophical thought.

 

I am aware that many people don’t think this way, or don’t like hearing these kinds of opinions. Most frequently because they have not thought enough on these issues.

 

Outside the academic framework, I find the historical perception or historical absolutisation of nations roles and their importance to be a degrading phenomenon. I am for the “perspective” rather than the “retrospective.”

 

Back to our main subject.

 

I have to tell you that your revelations on the Armenian origins of entire regions of modern day Turkish population are very intriguing. And it is very logical, at least to me, that they may hate Armenians more than some other segments of Turkish population may do. I personally would like to learn more about them. Have you thoroughly researched the subject or is it more on the level of a hypothesis?

 

[ February 19, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

[levonyeshilian]

Ali,

Like you said,I don't think the genetic resarches can define a nation,especially for the caucasians and anatolians.Anatolia and Mesopotamia were homeland of countless nations and we're the grandsons of all of them.

Let's forget thousands of years ago and come to 1923.You are right,Ataturk had to find something common to join the people.But i always wish this wasn't the Turkish prototype.As you know according to the 'Turan' myths we were educated as all the languages derived from Turkish,all the

historically civilized nations(e.g.Sumerians,Hittites) were the ancestors of the Turks and even the Kurds are the mountain Turks....Maybe the new sense could be the being Anatolian sense not being Turkish..The name of the country could be Anatolia not Turkey.I,for myself,would be a proud citizen of the country Anatolia but not Turkey(the land of the Turks).

[surorus]

Aurguplu,

Just out of curiosity I have visited the web site of Pembroke College, and went of the alumni list. However, I could not find your name neither in registered nor in missing alumni list.

web page

[aurguplu]

surorus,

 

thanks for the info.

 

i am not an alumnus in that i am a celebrity whose contribution to humanity has been recognised by the college, and therefore i am not a bit surprised that i don't figure in that list. by the way, i don't recall having pretended i was one.

 

i studied there 1986-1990, got a i.ii. (upper second) in Oriental Studies, and two years later was awarded an M.A.

 

if there is a list of graduates (not alumni) on that website (i never checked it), i should figure there. if i don't then i shall contact the college. if i am on their mailing list when it comes to asking for donations, then i should also be on their list of graduates.

 

yours,

 

ali suat

[surorus]

Aurguplu,

Alumni is a graduate or former student of a shcool, college, or university. You should be either in registered or missing list of Alumni. You should contact the Pembroke College at:Pembroke College contact

Alumni list:Pembroke Alumni List

[ February 20, 2001: Message edited by: surorus ]

[aurguplu]

surorus,

you looked me up in the wrong place. i graduated from pembroke college, oxford, not cambridge. the link you provided me took me there. look me up at pembroke college, oxford, and if you still don't find me, them i'll contact the college.

(by the way, my surname is urguplu and matric date 1986. don't look me up under "s" or "1990".

yours,

ali suat urguplu

[surorus]

aurguplu,

 

 

The second Pembroke College atPembrokehas a very lame web site. It does not provide the list of gradutates.

[aurguplu]

surorus,

 

sorry for the lameness of pembroke, oxford's web site (if it is really pembroke, oxford's web site).

 

i haven't been much in touch with the college since i graduated (got my b.a. conferred in 1991 and visited the place in 1998 only), and never visited their web site.

 

if you still have doubts about my affiliation to the college, you can write to them and get the info if you feel so inclined. since it isn't a state secret, they shouldn't give you any trouble. here is the address:

 

the college secretary

pembroke college

oxford ox1 1dw

united kingdom

 

i can't recall the phone number off my head, but this should be good enough.

 

my full name is ali suat urguplu (used to spell suad when i was there), matriculation date: 1986, graduation date: 1990, subject: oriental studies (tukish with arabic), tutor at college: prof. alan jones, degree conferred: b.a. & then an m.a. (found eligible for it two years later without writing a thesis ), grade got: ii.i. (second class, first division). i hope this is enough info.

 

yours,

 

ali suat

 

[ February 21, 2001: Message edited by: aurguplu ]

[levonyeshilian]

Surorus,

Did we start to discuss where Ali graduated from???Can he be a high-school boy or an agent? ....I liked your posts Ali and i'm waiting for your other posts....

 

[ February 21, 2001: Message edited by: levonyeshilian ]

[aurguplu]

thanks levon

 

i am writing out the discussions with prof. halil berktay, but it will take some time as 1) it is long, and 2) we are currently dealing with a serious financial crisis in turkey, and i have to give this matter top priority.

 

so there may be some delay in my postings for the time being, but i hope in about a week's time things will improve.

 

meanwhile, anyone can run any check they like on me. got nothing to hide.

 

cheers,

 

ali suat

[MJ]

Just wanted to bring to your attention a new material I have posted in the "Vahakn N. Dadrian's research on the subject of Genocide" thread of this forum.

[Berj]

Groong

 

Read the letter by Steven D. Kamajian.