Turkey's regional politics

[Guest]

Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs

Volume 45, Issue 1,

 

Pages 81-91 (Winter 2001)

 

Turkey's caucasian initiatives

 

by Paul B. Henze

Paul B.Henze, 6014 Namakagan Road, Bethesda, MD, USA 20816

 

Since the end of the Cold War, Turkish diplomacy has been active à tous

azimuths, not least the northeastern. In the many, often contentious

republics that arose in the Caucasus after the Soviet crack-up, Turkish

leaders perceive opportunities to expand trade, strengthen security, and

participate in the anticipated oil boom. So far, their success has been

mixed, because long historical shadows still dance over the region.

 

A checkerboard of peoples

Long before the creation of the modern Turkish state, extensive links

existed between the Caucasus and Anatolia. Some of the most ancient peoples

of the region are believed to have entered Anatolia from the Caucasus, while

Roman armies reached deep into what is today eastern Turkey and penetrated

Georgia and Armenia. The Byzantine Empire enjoyed close ties to the

Christian civilizations of the Caucasus, and its borderlands were an arena

of competition among Rome, Byzantium, and Persia for centuries. Turkic

mercenaries fought in Byzantine armies before the Battle of Manzikert

(1071), when Seljuk sultan Alparslan defeated the Byzantines and captured

Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes himself.1 Once firmly established in Anatolia,

the Turks moved steadily westward into Europe, but continued to be deeply

involved with the Caucasus to the east. After the Ottomans captured Trabzon

in 1461, another period of competition with Persia ensued. For long periods,

the Ottoman Empire exercised control over Georgia, the Circassian coast, and

the entire north shore of the Black Sea. The Crimean khans were vassals of

the sultan, and Ottoman emissaries penetrated into the North Caucasus to

establish contacts with Kabardans, Chechens, and Dagestanis and to trade

with Azerbaijan. Most Caucasian Muslims looked to Turkey as the center of

their civilization and their potential protector. After the Russian conquest

of Crimea in 1783, the Ottomans began their gradual retreat eastward along

the Black Sea coast, although they did manage to win occasional victories

over Russia. They did not lose Anapa, near the outlet of the Sea of Azov,

until 1829, and, with initial encouragement from Britain, continued covert

support of the Circassians until their final conquest by the tsar's armies

in 1864, five years after the defeat of the great Caucasian resistance

leader Shamil. 2

 

Turkey's struggle with Russia in the Caucasus throughout the nineteenth

century is essential to understanding Turkish attitudes and policies toward

the Caucasus at the end of the twentieth.3 Each Russo-Turkish war brought a

resurgence of Turkish efforts to support Caucasian peoples against the

Russians, but in the end the tsarist armies won out and engaged in ethnic

cleansing on a massive scale. The northeastern Black Sea coast was

practically cleared of Circassians, Abaza, and Abkhaz, and historians

believe that well over a million of these peoples were deported to the

Ottoman Empire between 1860 and 1875. 4 They were parceled out among the

lightly populated parts of Anatolia and more distant provinces of the

empire, forming the core of the so-called Circassian communities in Syria,

Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. 5 Simultaneously, Chechens, Dagestanis,

and Azeris from the eastern side of the North Caucasus made their way to

Turkey in smaller numbers in the wake of Shamil's defeat. Still other

refugees arrived after the Ottomans had to cede the cities of Batum,

Ardahan, and Kars to Russia after losing the war of 1876-78, because the

Ottoman Empire, like the modern Turkish republic, maintained liberal

immigration policies for persons of Turkic blood.

 

After World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, a new wave of

defeated Caucasians found refuge in Turkey, augmented by Muslims fleeing

communist rule in the Volga-Ural region and Central Asia. The long Russian

effort to break the "North Caucasus barrier" entailed exploitation of the

Christian peoples of the Caucasus (Georgians, Armenians, Ossetes, and a few

smaller groups) in order to counter the Muslims. During each Russo-Turkish

war from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, Russia sought to use

Ottoman Armenians and other eastern Anatolian Christians as a fifth column.

The practice had disastrous consequences for all these ancient communities

during the upheavals of 1917-22, including the deaths of hundreds of

thousands of Armenians as well as other Christians and Muslims.

 

The southern Caucasus experienced foreign intervention from several

directions after the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917. Imperial

Germany attempted to establish a foothold in Georgia. Turkey was sympathetic

to Azerbaijani strivings for independence and opposed to Armenian efforts to

expand the territory of the emerging Armenian republic. For a brief period

following the armistice of November 1918, Britain occupied Baku and actively

attempted to reinforce independence movements in Georgia and Armenia.6 These

efforts proved ineffective, however, because the Bolsheviks were able to

exploit serious divisions within each Caucasian republic. Their rhetoric

about self-determination of nations notwithstanding, Lenin and Stalin were

not about to permit the Russian hold on the Caucasus to be broken. The Red

Army moved systematically to gain control of each of the South Caucasian

republics and had for the most part accomplished its aim by the end of 1921.

It took much longer to "pacify" the North Caucasus, where Muslim guerrilla

movements continued operating for the rest of the decade.

 

As for Turkey, the ambitions of expansive nationalists such as Enver *****

included assertion of Turkish dominance throughout the Caucasus and Central

Asia. Enver allied himself briefly with Lenin, but turned against the

Bolsheviks in Central Asia, assembled a Turkish-dominated guerrilla army,

and fell to ignominious defeat near the Afghan frontier in remote eastern

Bukhara (now in Tajikistan) in August 1922.7 The much more realistic Mustafa

Kemal (who later took the surname Atatürk) calculated that establishing a

firm eastern frontier for his new Turkish republic was as far as his

ambition should take him. He took advantage of Lenin's desire to subdue

independent Armenia by making a bargain with him, formalized in the Treaty

of Alexandropol (Gümrü) in December 1920. In return for restoration of Kars

and Ardahan to Turkey, Russia would keep Batum, and the Bolsheviks would be

free to do with Armenia as they wished.

 

The Turkish republic that arose in the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire in

1923 had a population of barely 13 million. Perhaps as many as 2 million -

15 percent - were of Caucasian origin. Atatürk's emphasis on nationalism and

pride in Turkishness led to assimilation of those living within the

boundaries established by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.8 Subsequent

prohibition of irredentist movements left Turkey's citizens of Caucasian and

Balkan origin with only limited opportunities to keep their cultural

traditions alive. Education and political activity, moreover, were conducted

exclusively in Turkish. Although some prominent political exiles from the

Caucasus settled in Turkey, entered academic life, wrote valuable memoirs,

and laid the foundations for Caucasian and Central Asian studies in Turkish

universities, they were not allowed to conduct anti-Soviet activities. To be

sure, Turkey's relations with the Soviet Union remained cool, and communism

was strictly proscribed. But Atatürk's agreement with Moscow meant that

Caucasian frontiers remained more tightly sealed during most of the

twentieth century than they had been in previous thousands of years of

history.

 

Thanks to Ismet Inönü's astute leadership, Turkey managed to stay out of

World War II, maintaining formal neutrality until the war's final stages.

Allied leaders concluded that Turkish nonbelligerence served their interests

better than Turkey's participation would have, because the latter course

might have prematurely opened a Balkan front. The German advance toward the

Caucasian oil fields in 1941¯42 inspired brief hopes of liberation from

Soviet rule among some Caucasians and Caucasian exiles. The Caucasus was a

major source of Soviet petroleum and a key link in the Lend-Lease lifeline

over which the United States sent vast quantities of supplies and equipment

to Russia through the Persian Gulf.

 

As the war in Europe came to an end, Stalin's lust for expansion led him

into a blunder that propelled Turkey firmly into the Western alliance.

 

Stalin's lust for expansion propelled Turkey into the Western alliance.

 

He pressed Ankara for special rights in the Turkish Straits and generated

demands from his Georgian and Armenian Soviet Republics for "rectification"

of their borders, which would have required ceding Turkish territory to the

Soviet Union. Turkey's response was an unequivocal refusal, and Turkish

suspicion of Soviet intentions was reinforced by Stalin's attempt to

maintain a foothold in Iranian Azerbaijan (frustrated by U.S. action in the

new United Nations in 1946). From this time onward, Turkey shifted steadily

into the Western alliance. The Truman Doctrine and a major U.S. aid program

to Turkey launched in 1947 were followed by Turkish involvement with the

Marshall Plan and membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation

and Development (OECD), the Council of Europe (1950), and NATO (1953).

 

During World War II, Turkey was a center of intelligence activity by all the

powers.9 When Stalin clearly demonstrated his desire to abet communist

takeovers in East European countries and exercise heavy-handed influence

around the world, Western intelligence activities in Turkey (as well as

Turkey's own) became firmly focused on the Soviet bloc. Caucasian and

Central Asian exiles became actively involved by publishing journals and

books, staffing U.S.-sponsored radio stations such as the Voice of America

and Radio Liberty, and working for Western intelligence services. The

Turkish government, however, despite its firmly pro-Western and strongly

anticommunist stance, remained sensitive about exiles' political activities

and therefore maintained tight control over U.S. and other Western

intelligence operations directed at the Caucasus.

 

Stalin's successors lost no time building up bases in the Caucasus for all

branches of their military forces. By the end of the 1950s, the region was

dotted with modern installations and the Turco-Caucasian frontier was every

bit as militarized as the Iron Curtain in Central Europe. Until the end of

the 1980s, the Soviet Union maintained a half-mile-deep complex of plowed

strips, barbed-wire entanglements, and guard towers, and patrolled the

Turkish border by helicopter. Of course, these "defenses" served more to

keep Caucasians and other Soviet citizens from leaving than to keep Turks

>From entering. Turkish contacts with citizens of the Caucasian Soviet

republics were restricted to sporadic, low-level political and cultural

exchanges. Crossing points at Sarp on the Black Sea and at Gümrü (Leninakan)

in Armenia remained quiet except for occasional transits of diplomats and

minimal exchanges of goods.

 

In the 1980s, the rigid application of some of Atatürk's principles in

Turkish life began to be eased. Turkey's leaders became less sensitive about

ethnicity, and its citizens, now much more open to the world, found

themselves free to take an interest in their heritage. Meanwhile, Turkish

historians and other academic specialists had begun to produce an impressive

body of research about the Türk Dünyasí - the Turkish world and the peoples

close to it. Interest in the Caucasus, moreover, was no longer primarily the

province of exiles of Caucasian origin or their descendants, though many of

them made major contributions to research as they explored their own roots.

By the time the Soviet Union began to crumble, Caucasians were no longer

simply grouped under the heading Çerkes, and descendants of Chechens, Avars,

Lezgins, Kumyks, Abkhaz, Karachay, Balkar, Nogay, and others formed

associations of their own. As soon as Soviet power collapsed and borders

opened, these groups quickly reestablished links with their long-separated

kinsmen.

 

The Georgians and Turkey

Prime Minister (later President) Turgut Özal laid the basis for official

relations with the soon-to-be-sovereign South Caucasian republics even

before they broke with Moscow. By September 1991 a Turkish diplomatic

delegation had already visited Baku, Yerevan, and Tbilisi to arrange for

formal diplomatic relations. Although Armenia's war with Azerbaijan over

Nagorno-Artsax prevented formal diplomatic relations, Turkish embassies

were soon set up in Baku and Tbilisi. The Georgian border was opened for

traffic in both directions. During 1991 more than a million Georgians made

shopping trips to Turkey, and a Turkish consulate general was opened in

Trabzon. Daily hydrofoil service was inaugurated between Batum and Trabzon,

and Georgian and Turkish airlines now provide efficient service between

Tbilisi and Istanbul. New border crossing points were opened in the

mid-1990s, and Georgia has now become a major avenue for truck and bus

traffic across the Caucasus and northward into the Russian Federation. Turks

of Georgian ancestry publish the journal Cveneburi, which is written largely

in Turkish but includes some Georgian texts and vocabularies in Laz and

other Georgian dialects.

 

Historical ties between Turkey and Georgia go back at least as far as the

High Middle Ages, when present-day northeastern Turkey formed an important

part of the Kingdom of Georgia. The Georgian monarchs King David the Builder

and Queen Tamara lived in that region and constructed numerous churches,

castles, bridges, and other architectural monuments that survive to this

day. When the Ottomans conquered the area in the fifteenth century, the new

rulers encouraged the native Georgian population to remain in place and

gradually converted them to Islam. Some of the great churches were turned

into mosques, their frescoes simply painted over. Prior to the spread of

modern schools, radio, television, and newspapers, most of the rural

population still spoke Georgian, and a Georgian dialect is widely used today

among the Laz of the eastern Black Sea coast. Conversion to Islam turned

both the Laz and inland Georgians into loyal subjects of the Ottoman Empire

and later into citizens of the Turkish republic. Neither imperial Russians

nor Soviets were successful in creating an irredentist movement among these

people, who in recent years have had further reason to be thankful to belong

to a rapidly modernizing, democratic country. Until World War I, families on

both sides of the border managed to maintain ties to each other, and the

resumption of these connections during the past decade has much to do with

the rapidly improving transit and communications links between the two

countries.

 

Good relations on a personal level have largely mirrored constructive

political ties and are enhanced by the close relationship between Georgian

president Eduard Shevardnadze and Turkish president Süleyman Demirel.

Turkish trade with Georgia has expanded steadily, accompanied by a modest

amount of Turkish investment and credit. Turkey has provided assistance to

Georgia's new army and opened its service schools to Georgian military

personnel. Turkey has supported Georgia's entry into the Black Sea

Cooperation Organization and other regional bodies. Cooperative endeavors

also include cultural and academic projects such as joint archaeological

explorations. Turkish relations with Georgia's autonomous Republic of Ajaria

have been especially close, not surprisingly inasmuch as Ajaria formed part

of the Ottoman Empire for more than 400 years before 1878 and was given

"autonomy" under Soviet rule because of its predominantly Muslim population.

 

For the most part, both Turkey and independent Georgia have had the good

sense to refrain from any irredentist claims. One potential pitfall for

Turkish-Georgian relations arose when Abkhaz refugees and descendants in

Turkey sought Turkey's support for the Russian nationalist-backed effort to

detach Abkhazia from Georgia immediately after independence. Although the

Abkhaz managed to attract some sympathy among the Turkish population and in

some quarters of the government, the realization that the Abkhaz separatists

were being manipulated by former Communists and militarists in Russia for

their own purposes in the North Caucasus - and falsely claimed to be

oppressed Muslims - eventually prevented any serious Turkish involvement in

that movement.10 Turkish authorities intervened to keep Abkhaz freebooters

>From mounting operations from eastern Black Sea ports. Turkey has supported

both the U.N. observer force in Abkhazia and international efforts to settle

the problem. Abkhazia itself remains depressed, a sad fate for the region

once dubbed the Soviet Riviera.

 

The Armenians and Turkey

Given the legacy of Armenian "treason" (in Turkish eyes) and Turkish

"genocide" (in Armenian eyes), it is surprising that one finds almost as

many Turkish products on sale on the streets of Yerevan as in Batum,

Tbilisi, or Baku. However, the Armenian-Turkish border remains closed, and

the only official trade between the two countries involves intermittent air

and land travel for transport of emergency relief. For the most part,

Turkish products as well as relief shipments enter Armenia via Georgia. When

Armenia experienced a devastating earthquake in 1988, Turkey provided

substantial aid, but Armenia's campaign to absorb Nagorno-Artsax began the

following year and developed into a full-scale war. Armenia's victory over

Azerbaijani forces and its occupation of large sections of western

Azerbaijan created a refugee population numbering in the hundreds of

thousands. These circumstances, combined with the opposition of Turkish

public opinion to any improvement in relations, made it impossible for any

Turkish government to establish normal diplomatic or trade relations with

Armenia. Ankara insists that normalization of relations must depend on

Armenian withdrawal from Azerbaijani territory and resolution of the status

of Nagorno-Artsax.

 

The rancor and distrust born of past Turco-Armenian tensions are never far

>From the surface and contribute to the troubled bilateral relationship.

Unlike the Georgian-derived community concentrated in northeastern Turkey,

Armenians were scattered widely over Anatolia and had a strong presence in

Istanbul. And unlike the Georgians residing in Turkey, few Armenians

converted to Islam. Still, for centuries the Armenians were considered among

the sultan's most loyal subjects, and many served the Ottoman Empire in

Anatolia, the Balkans, and Arab areas. Others achieved high status as

scholars, clerics, architects, doctors, and government officials in

Istanbul. During the late nineteenth century, nationalist movements grew

rapidly among Armenians in both the Russian and Ottoman Empires. During the

last two decades before World War I, clashes between Armenians and Turks

grew in intensity. During World War I, many Armenians in eastern Anatolia

supported Russia, and Ottoman generals consequently ordered many of them

deported to Syria. As a result of the severe hardship, a great many people

perished on all sides. The Armenians also committed their own share of

atrocities against Kurds and Turks.11

 

Both Armenians and Turks seemed to have moved beyond this history until the

1960s, when the extensive Armenian diaspora began to revive memories of the

tragedy. Moscow, seeing in this renewed awareness an opportunity to

destabilize Turkey and drive a wedge between Turkey and the United States,

encouraged its own Armenians to agitate and provided clandestine support for

the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), which

espoused Marxism and the annexation of eastern Anatolia to the Soviet Union.

The spectacular assassinations of Turkish diplomats by ASALA agents, coupled

with intense Armenian lobbying against Turkey in the U.S. Congress,

rekindled the old animosity that continues to hinder normal relations

between the two neighbors. While some leaders in independent Armenia have

called on all parties to move beyond past hatred and concentrate on future

opportunities, they have not yet prevailed. Those politicians who nurture

old wounds and favor a close alliance with nationalist elements in Russia

have maintained their dominance. Although landlocked Armenia stands to gain

far more from reconciliation than does Turkey, public opinion surveys show

that most Turks would welcome normalization.

 

Surveys show that most Turks would welcome normalization with Armenia.

 

The Azerbaijanis and Turkey

Turkey's relations with independent Azerbaijan, by contrast, have been even

warmer than those with Georgia. Turks regard Azeris as first cousins, and

their languages are mutually intelligible, although the Azeris have adopted

a somewhat more awkward Latin alphabet than the one used in Turkey. The fact

that the majority of Azeris are Shi'ite Muslim while most Turks are Sunni

has not dampened the enthusiasm of both peoples for each other. Azerbaijani

intellectuals were leaders in the revival of Turkic nationalist

consciousness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and were

always sympathetically regarded by Turkish nationalists.12 After the Red

Army put an end to Azerbaijan's independence, many Azerbaijani leaders

settled in Turkey. A further influx of Azerbaijani émigrés arrived after

World War II, when former Red Army soldiers captured by the Germans made

their way to Turkey and fit easily into Turkish life.

 

The Soviet KGB used Baku as a base for subversive operations against Turkey

for many years. Turkey felt little affinity for Heidar Aliev and his

successor, Ayaz Mutalibov, the Azerbaijani leaders of the Gorbachev era.

Mutalibov found himself presiding somewhat reluctantly over Azerbaijani

independence. Turkey favored Ebulfez Elchibey, who won the comparatively

free election of 1992 but governed for less than a year. Of his many

mistakes, perhaps the most serious was advocating the union of far more

populous Iranian (southern) Azerbaijan with the smaller independent

republic, an aspiration that Turkey could not support. Elchibey was

overthrown in a coup in June 1993 that brought Aliev back to power.

Immediate reaction in Turkey, as in much of the world, was negative, since

Aliev was thought to have been restored at Russian initiative.

 

If such was the case, then Aliev must have proved a disappointment to

Moscow, for during the next year he established himself as an Azerbaijani

patriot and was soon warmly embraced by Turkish leaders. Turkish-Azerbaijani

relations have been close ever since, as witnessed by flourishing trade and

cultural exchanges. In Azerbaijan one now finds Turkish schools,

Turkish-language television broadcasts, and even editions of Turkish

newspapers. Turkish investment in Azerbaijan has grown steadily, and Turkish

construction firms have been active in Baku. A bridge has been built at the

narrow border between Turkey and the autonomous Republic of Nakhichevan,

which is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a strip of Armenia that

extends to the Iranian border.

 

Turkey is well aware of the considerable potential benefit of a good

relationship with Azerbaijan. Notably, Turkey hopes (as does the United

States) that most Azerbaijani oil can be transported westward via a new

pipeline across Georgia that would link up with the pipeline originally

built to transport Iraqi oil to Ceyhan on the Gulf of Iskenderun. Aside from

the profit to be gained from putting to use a pipeline that has sat unused

for a decade, a major Turkish motivation is to reduce pressure from abroad

to permit increased tanker traffic through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.

 

Turkey and the North Caucasus

Turkey, like the rest of the world, officially recognizes the sovereignty of

the Russian Federation over the varied republics of the North Caucasus.

Nonofficial contacts have increased significantly in recent years, however,

particularly as Turkish citizens of North Caucasian derivation travel in and

trade with the region. But the principal issue affecting Turkish relations

with the North Caucasus is the Chechens' struggle for independence. The

large numbers of Chechens who have fled to Turkey have attracted the

attention of the Turkish media and the sympathy of the Turkish people.

Mindful of the sentiments of its own citizens, the Turkish government has

offered only minimal interference to Chechen exiles publicizing their cause.

As a result, Russia has periodically objected to the tepid governmental

response and sought to intimidate Ankara into repressing the Chechens,

although so far to no avail.

 

After Chechnya, Turkey shows the most interest in Dagestan, a populous

republic with a bewildering mosaic of peoples who reside in the mountains

along the western shore of the Caspian Sea north of Azerbaijan. Many Turks

are of Dagestani origin, and regular weekly flights between Makhach-Kala and

Istanbul help to maintain ties on many levels, including commerce in

Caucasian carpets and handicrafts, for which Turkey is a major outlet.

Turkey also supports three prestigious high schools in Dagestan staffed by

Turkish instructors. An impressive new Turkish-style mosque designed by a

Turkish architect was dedicated in Makhach-Kala in October 1997 during

celebrations of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the resistance

leader Shamil.13 Shamil was an Avar, not a Turk, but like all the non-Turkic

Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus, he has long enjoyed the status of

"honorary Turk" and will no doubt continue to do so. 14

 

Prospects for the Caucasian frontier

The collapse of the Soviet Union rapidly restored the close but complicated

relationship between Turkey and the Caucasus that had existed for centuries.

Caucasians never forgot that they were neighbors of Turkey, and despite

decades of anti-Turkish Soviet propaganda (perhaps even because of it) they

have continued to be deeply interested in Turkey. The affinity takes many

forms. For a minority the Islamic link is important, for others Turkic

culture and historical ties take precedence, and to most Caucasians Turkey

represents a model of the sort of successful modernization and development

they soon hope to enjoy. Eventually, they also hope to follow Turkey on the

path toward a much deeper relationship with Europe. No one can predict the

extent to which, in years to come, the Caucasus will develop into a major

highway to Asia, a "new Silk Road" that leads all the way to China. But the

region will nevertheless continue to be an important avenue for Turkish

traffic and trade to the east and north, and if the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline

becomes reality, it will lead to expansion of Turkish ties to Georgia and

Azerbaijan. Only Armenia will remain, as ever, the exception to these happy

trends-unless and until it has the good fortune to find leaders focused more

on future opportunities with Turkey than past injustices.

 

 

Paul B. Henze, a retired U.S. diplomat and long-time consultant to RAND, is

a specialist in Caucasian history and current politics. His history of

modern Turkey, Ataturk's Legacy (SOTA Publishers, 1998) is currently being

prepared for publication in Turkish translation

 

 

1 Gyula Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica (Leiden: Brill, 1983).

 

2 Paul B. Henze, "Circassian Resistance to Russia," in The North Caucasus

Barrier, ed. Marie B. Broxup (London: Hurst, 1992), pp. 66-111.

 

3 W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the

Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1953).

 

4 Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914 (Madison, Wis.: University of

Wisconsin Press, 1985); Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic

Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press,

1995).

 

5 Because the Circassians were the most numerous of the Caucasian refugees,

Turks called all Caucasians Cherkess (Çerkes). Only recently have the

descendants of the various Caucasian peoples in Turkey begun again to use

their original ethnic designations.

 

6 Firuz Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917-1921 (New York:

Philosophical Library, 1951).

 

7 Alexandre Bennigsen et al., Soviet Strategy and Islam (London: Macmillan,

1989), pp. 8-12.

 

8 The question of Mosul remained open. It was awarded by the League of

Nations to Britain's Iraq mandate in 1926. No other adjustments of Turkey's

boundaries occurred until 1939, when France transferred Hatay (the Sanjak of

Alexandretta) from its Syrian mandate to Turkey. See C. J. Edmonds, Kurds,

Turks and Arabs: Politics, Travel, and Research in Northeastern Iraq,

1919¯25 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957).

 

9 One of the best sources on this subject is Barry Rubin, Istanbul Intrigues

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989).

 

10 Most Abkhaz Muslims migrated to Turkey in the nineteenth century, while

those who remained were primarily Christian. Nothing of Islam survived in

Abkhazia into the twentieth century. The notion that the Abkhaz were

anticommunist Muslims gained currency in the international press in 1991-92

and was skillfully exploited by both separatists and Russians.

 

11 For a reasonably objective assessment of these events by an American

scholar, see McCarthy, Death and Exile, pp. 179-253. For a comprehensive

collection of documents from the Turkish viewpoint, see Armenian

Allegations: Myth and Reality (Washington, D.C.: Assembly of American

Turkish Organizations, 1986). For varied Armenian viewpoints, see Louise

Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement (Berkeley, Calif.:

University of California Press, 1967), pp. 161-85; Christopher Walker,

Armenia: Survival of a Nation (London: Croom Helm, 1980), pp. 121-240; and

Ronald Suny, Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History (Bloomington,

Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 94-115.

 

12 Audrey Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian

Rule (Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution Press, 1992).

 

13 Paul B. Henze, "Dagestan in October 1997-Imam Shamil Lives!" Caspian

Crossroads, Winter/Spring 2000, pp. 16-31.

 

14 This phenomenon is hardly new. Samih Nafiz Tansu's 1975 biography of

Shamil, Seyh Samil, bore the subtitle "A Turk Who Refused to Bow to the

Tsars."

 

Copyright © 2001 Foreign Policy Research Institute

[Guest]

Note that there are some incorrect assertions in the material above. One of them being the assertion that Turkish-Russian bargain has been formalized through the Alexandrapole (Giumry) treaty of 1920. In fact, I am sure, the author meant to reference the 1921 Russian-Turkish Treaty.

 

Obviously, the author is also questioning the qualification of Armenian massacres by Turkey as Genocide.