German militarism's connivance with Committee of Union and Progres

[Yervant1]

Today's Zaman, Turkey

May 20 2012

 

German militarism's connivance with Committee of Union and Progress

 

by Ümit Kardaþ*

 

20 May 2012 /

 

Wolfgang Gust, the foreign news chief of Der Spiegel and the editor of

Spiegel-Buch, and his wife, Sigrid Gust, have worked on the German

Foreign Ministry's political archives concerning the disaster and

massacre Armenians suffered in 1915 and 1916.

Their book, "Alman Belgeleri: Ermeni Soykýrýmý 1915-1916" (German

Documents: Armenian Genocide 1915-1916), published by Belge Yayýnlarý

in Turkey, is 992 pages long, of which 179 pages are allocated to the

evaluation and interpretation of the documents and some additional

resources, while the remaining 813 pages present the archived

documents. These documents testify to the sheer magnitude of the

forced relocation of Armenians for eventual destruction, and its

portrayal of the German administration in this tragedy makes this book

important.

 

German policies concerning Turkey and Armenians were being shaped by

the German army's top-down management style. Clearly, Germany had an

authoritarian regime in which Prussian militarism played a dominant

role. When the bourgeois revolution that sought to implement the

ideals of the French revolution in Germany in 1848 failed, 2.8 million

Germans left their country, and most of them went to the US. The

notion of human rights did not exist in the German language. The

German academic world argued that German culture would disintegrate

without German militarism.

 

German culture had sprung from militarism thanks to the protection it

provided. Therefore, this mentality was opposed to Western

civilization. In response, Western-minded Armenian elites didn't like

Germans. And Germans didn't like Western-minded Armenians. In a report

he sent from Damascus to the chancellor of the German Empire, Theobald

von Bethmann-Hollweg, German propagandist and Intelligence Bureau for

the East head Max Freiherr von Oppenheim described American and

British missionary and consulate activities as provocative and

malicious. For this reason, Germans started to regard Armenians as

their seventh ally (i.e., after Oppenheim started sowing discord

between the Germans and the Americans and the British, the Germans

began to warm to the Armenians).

 

Germans sought to extend the Baghdad railway not just to Baghdad but

also to Basra on the Persian Gulf and perceived the region as an area

of interest as a German colony and to ensure German economic dominance

in the region and eventually to annex the region to the German Empire.

The center of this area of interest was the Çukurova/Adana region

(Cilicia).

 

In a letter he wrote in July 1913 to German Ambassador Hans Freiherr

von Wangenheim, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Gottlieb von Jagow

summed this up as follows, "Turkey will maintain its presence in Asia

until we reinforce our limits of work and complete the annexation."

The German plan to reach through the depths of Anatolia to Palestine

started swiftly in 1912. Their goal was to reach the Suez Canal. This

policy pitted the Germans against the British, who had investments and

enterprises in Ottoman territories and pursued similar policies.

 

In addition to Britain, Russia and France were uneasy about

cooperation between Germany and the Committee of Union and Progress

(CUP). Germans made progress in their projects in the fields of

economy, commerce, agriculture, navigation and education in the

Ottoman territories. Parallel to these developments, Enver Paþa made a

secret agreement with the Germans for the reforming of the army, and

General Otto Liman von Sanders and 50 German military officers from

Berlin were invited to the Ottoman Empire. In practice, these military

officers also meddled with the political affairs of the CUP.

Non-Muslim groups living in the Ottoman Empire posed an obstacle to

Germany's economic and ideological aspirations in the East. Thus began

the connivance of German militarism with the CUP for inhumane

practices against non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.

 

Turkey allies with Germany

 

As Turkey allied with Germany in World War I, a savage and ruthless

practice against Greeks and Armenians commenced. In 1914, an

oppressive campaign was launched against Greeks, and the destruction

of Greek settlements started. In early 1915, Deutsche Palastine Bank

(German-Palestine Bank) distributed flyers in Turkish that provoked

Muslims in the East and incited hatred against Christians and that

told Muslims to cut their commercial ties with them. Forced relocation

of Greeks in Ayvalýk was conducted upon official demand from Gen.

Liman von Sanders (see Mihail Rodas: "Almanya Türkiye'deki Rumlarý

Nasýl Mahvetti?" [How did Germany Destroy Greeks in Turkey?]).

 

With the start of the war, the military recruitment system had been

altered so that non-Muslims who wanted to serve in the army would have

to pay a specified tax or become military deserters. Moreover, labor

battalions were formed from the Christians sent from Anatolia for road

construction and other forced labor work. Thousands of Christians who

were forced to work in these battalions were not paid and were not

provided with adequate nutrition, and they would lose their lives

under hard climatic conditions. This compulsory military service model

destroyed the most efficient groups of ethnic and non-Muslim

minorities, and this model was further assisted by confiscations and

compulsory taxes. Thus, the wealth of these minorities was

confiscated, and their shops were looted.

 

As wealth and commerce were Turkified and Islamified, Germany took its

share through its banks and companies. Muslims were prohibited from

developing commercial ties with Greeks, who were banned from exporting

goods. The government decided to confiscate all properties of those

who were forced to migrate. Another method was to force Christians to

become Muslims. Gen. Liman von Sanders collected taxes from Christians

to establish an orphanage in Bandýrma. Here, boys would be

assimilated, and girls would be forced to marry Turkish boys.

Christian families would be sent to predominantly Turkish villages,

and they would not be allowed to leave the village. In addition to

general massacres, there were also individually committed murders. The

two-phased policy -- implemented mainly against Greeks in 1914 but

later expanded to include Armenians -- had a single aim: to destroy

the Christian components so that the Ottoman Empire could be converted

into a purely Turkish/Muslim state. Kurds were excluded from this

policy as they were Muslims and therefore could be Turkified. Kurdish

and Circassian gangs played a role in this massacre.

 

Germany's policies regarding their interests in the East had

overlapped with the CUP's policy of homogenizing the country. This is

clearly evidenced by the fact that German Ambassador to the Ottoman

Empire Count Wolff-Metternich, who criticized the developments, was

removed from office by the Kaiser on the grounds that he "undermined

the dignity of Turks and failed to act according to German interests

by interfering in favor of Christians." Armenians, who were the first

tribe to accept Christianity, were being crushed between the Russian

hammer and the Turkish-German anvil.

 

There were 800 German military officers in the Ottoman territories

under the service agreement signed by the Ottoman Empire and the

German Military Aid Delegation in 1913. They not only trained Turkish

military officers, but also formed part of the Turkish army. German

military officers assumed critical positions everywhere in the Turkish

army. The number of German military officers who openly voiced

objection to the forced relocation and massacre was very few. Three

German military officers who opposed forced relocation in Erzurum paid

dearly for their opposition.

 

A brutal report

 

In a report attached to a letter he sent to Chancellor of the German

Empire Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Rudolf von Valentini from the

Privy Council of the German emperor said the following based on

observations that Martin Niepage, a teacher at the German school in

Aleppo, made in September 1915: "The men are slaughtered on the way;

the women and girls, with the exception of the old, the ugly and those

who are still children, have been abused by Turkish soldiers and

officers and then carried away to Turkish and Kurdish villages, where

they have to accept Islam. They try to destroy the remnant of the

convoys by hunger and thirst. Most of them are suffering from typhoid

and dysentery. If one brings them food, one notices that they have

forgotten how to eat. They just lie there quietly, waiting for death.

... Under such circumstances our educational work flies in the face of

all true morality and becomes a mockery of human sympathy.

Mohammedans, too, of more sensitive feelings -- Turks and Arabs alike

-- shake their heads in disapproval and do not conceal their tears

when they see a convoy of exiles marching through the city, and

Turkish soldiers using cudgels upon women in advanced pregnancy and

upon dying people who can no longer drag themselves along. They cannot

believe that their government has ordered these atrocities, and they

hold the Germans responsible for all such outrages, Germany being

considered during the war as Turkey's schoolmaster in everything.

Moslem intellectuals believe that even if the German nation condemns

this massacre, the German government will not be inclined to prevent

it for the sake of its friendship with the Turkish government."

 

Yunus Nadi wrote the following at the end of his article titled

"Bankruptcy and cleaning" that appeared in Tasvir-i Efkar on Oct. 7,

1916: "Under pressure from realities, we have to turn toward a new

target. We have to realize that the policy of ensuring a union among

the said ethnic groups has gone bankrupt and the era of 'cleaning' for

the sake of the homeland has started." A German missionary defined

this strategy of murder as follows: "Exile, execution and bullets

until the last member." A German military officer narrated his

observations as follows, "Amid the endless serenity of the desert,

wheezing sounds of those who are in the throes of death and the cries

of those who lost their minds were filling the skies."

 

In the early 1900s, a similar tragedy occurred in the desert of

Omaheke in South-West Africa -- currently Namibia. The victims were

not Armenians, but the Herero, who were massacred by the German

Imperial Forces led by Gen. Lothar von Trotha (who had violently

suppressed the Boxer rebellion in China). As he drove the Herero into

the desert of Omaheke, where they would die, Gen. Trotha justified the

massacre by saying, "I believe that the nation as such should be

annihilated." Perhaps, Gen. Trotha had advised the CUP leaders that

they should implement the recipe of destruction he had applied in

Africa.

 

The conclusion confirmed by the documents published by Gust is that

German military officers as agents of German militarism endorsed the

forced relocation, and they found military justifications for it. They

thought that Germany's interests in the region preached this. And the

CUP leaders violently implemented its Turkification and Islamification

policies with support and connivance from Germany. When the scope of

forced relocation was expanded to the entire country, the Germans did

not raise objections to it. Reading the details of the documents Gust

has managed to retrieve from the German Foreign Ministry's Political

Archives -- although the Germans had destroyed a significant portion

of these documents -- has left me in utter shame and gripped my soul.

 

Germany has a tradition of offering official apologies about such

periods of shame in their history. If German Chancellor Angela Merkel

and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan together condemn the

atrocities and massacres their ancestors performed, the souls of the

victims, squeezed somewhere, will turn into doves. Does conscience

tell us to spare our words from the oppressed?

 

*Ümit Kardaþ is a retired military judge.

 

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