| Leading article: The burden of history
The Independent
Published: 12 October 2007
A perfect diplomatic storm is brewing in Turkey. This week a
Congressional committee in Washington voted in favour of a resolution
describing the mass slaughter of Armenians by Turkey in 1915 as
genocide. This has predictably gone down badly in Ankara, which
refuses to accept that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during the
First Word War warrants such a label. Turkey is now considering
withdrawing military co-operation with the US over Iraq in response.
It gets worse. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has
been planning to introduce a motion to the Turkish parliament
sanctioning cross-border military operations into Iraqi Kurdistan to
strike the Kurdish rebel group operating from there. Such an incursion
could destabilise one of the few peaceful regions of Iraq. The White
House is trying to persuade Mr Erdogan not to send in troops, but the
Armenian resolution in Congress has wiped out Washington's leverage.
It is possible to have some sympathy for Mr Erdogan. He is under huge
internal pressure to act over the Kurdish situation. The killing of 15
Turkish soldiers has turned Turkish public opinion in favour of
cross-border military action. And Mr Erdogan must be wary of the
hostile Turkish military establishment. Mr Erdogan's Justice and
Development party won national elections this year, but the charge of
neglecting national security and refusing to stand up for Turkey
abroad would be a potent one.
There is no simple way out of this morass. Yet there is some hope.
There is no reason to believe that Mr Erdogan wants to alienate
Turkey's allies in the US and the EU by invading Kurdistan. And the
motion before the Turkish parliament would allow an incursion any time
within the next year. This opens a window for the US to put pressure
on the Kurdish government to clamp down on the rebels operating from
within its borders.
In the long term, Turkey needs to accept the terrible stain that the
Armenian slaughter has left on its national history. Regardless of
whether these events are called genocide or not, there is scant
evidence of this acceptance so far in Turkey. A negotiated settlement
with the Kurdish separatists, who represent up to a fifth of the
population, is also long overdue.
But in the short-term, Mr Erdogan deserves support from abroad for
keeping the show on the road. The alternatives for the international
community at the moment are significantly worse. The Armenian genocide
and Kurdish separatism are ultimately issues that Turkey must come to
terms with. But the rest of the world could - and should - be doing
more to make things easier for the moderates in Ankara in the process.
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The Guardian, UK
Oct 12 2007
Making difficult situations worse
Leader
Friday October 12, 2007
The Guardian
Outside Turkey there is a broad consensus that the massacre and
forced deportations of more than a million Armenians in the latter
years of the Ottoman empire were nothing less than genocide. Last
year France voted to make it a crime to deny that, and on Wednesday a
US congressional panel approved a bill describing the massacres as
genocide. But the country where this debate matters most is Turkey -
and officially it continues to claim that as many Turks as Armenians
died in the civil unrest of the crumbling empire. The real test of
the vote by the US house committee on foreign affairs is whether or
not a Turkish reassessment of the events of 1917 is likely to happen.
The issue is not just a lightning rod for nationalists, but a litmus
test for the human-rights agenda on which EU entry talks depend. The
Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted under article
301, a law that makes insulting the republic punishable by up to
three years in prison. He had said in an interview with a Swiss
newspaper that the Armenian massacres and the killings of over 30,000
Kurds in the 1990s were taboo topics in Turkey. A Turkish-Armenian
journalist, Hrant Dink, was shot dead outside his newspaper in
January for saying the killings were genocide; he had been prosecuted
under article 301, and yesterday his son Aram received a suspended
sentence under the same law. The US vote is unlikely to make it
easier for Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, to amend article 301, as
he would wish; in fact it will reinforce nationalist support for it.
The tangled web of cause and effect does not stop there. Turkey has
yet to respond to attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) which
have killed 15 soldiers and 12 civilians in the past 10 days. There
are about 3,000 PKK guerrillas, many operating from camps in the
Qandil mountains in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and the US is
desperate to stop a Turkish incursion. Ankara says that if neither
the leadership in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq nor the US is able
to curb the PKK, its troops will. The prime minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, succumbed this week to months of pressure from the army
chief of staff, agreeing that cross-border raids may have to happen.
Should they do so, the stability of the only area of Iraq untouched
by civil war would be under threat.
Mr Erdogan is a moderate on the Armenian and Kurdish questions, but
he knows that Turkish support for US regional policy is a house of
cards waiting to collapse. The US Democrats may hope to pick up easy
votes from the Armenian diaspora for their own election battles in
2008. But they should bear in mind that more than just domestic
politics are at stake: another country's people is looking on.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JUDGING GENOCIDE
Economist, UK
Oct 11 2007
Relations between America and Turkey may be badly strained by
Congress's wish to make a ruling on history
"THE Mohammedans in their fanaticism seemed determined not only
to exterminate the Christian population but to remove all traces
of their religion and...civilisation." So wrote an American consul
in Turkey, in 1915, about an incipient campaign by Ottoman Turkey
against its Armenian population. Today, Turkey explains the killings
of huge numbers of Armenians-as many as 1.5m died-as an unpleasant
by-product of the first world war's viciousness, in which Turks
suffered too. But Armenians have long campaigned for recognition of
what they say was genocide.
On Wednesday October 10th America's Congress stepped closer to
endorsing the latter view. The foreign-affairs committee of the
House of Representatives passed a bill stating that "the Armenian
Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from
1915 to 1923." The bill has enough co-sponsors that it seems likely
to pass the full House. The speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has a large number
of Armenians in her home district and has promised the measure a
vote on the floor. As a foretaste of the trouble this could stir
up in Turkey, the country's president, Abdullah Gul, immediately
condemned the passage of the bill. He called it "unacceptable" and
accused American politicians of being willing to cause "big problems
for small domestic political games".
Turkey is enormously important to American military efforts in the
Middle East. So leading American politicians past and present have
lined up to oppose the resolution. President George Bush has said
historians, not legislators, should decide the matter. Turkey has hired
Dick Gephardt, a former leader of the Democrats in the House, to lobby
against the bill. All eight living former secretaries of state, from
Henry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright, who lost three grandparents in
the Nazi Holocaust, oppose the bill. So does Condoleezza Rice, who
holds the post now. Jane Harman, a powerful and hawkish Democrat,
initially co-sponsored the measure. But last week she urged its
withdrawal. A trip to Turkey, where she met the prime minister and
the Armenian Orthodox patriarch, changed her mind.
Ms Harman echoed an argument that others have made against the
resolution: that Turkey itself is tiptoeing towards normal relations
with neighbouring Armenia. The resolution could throw that process
off course. But in other ways Turkey has not helped its own case:
its criminal code has been used against writers within the country
who dare to mention genocide.
And other Turkish behaviour has further distanced it from America.
Turkey recently signed a deal to develop oil and gas with Iran,
and has made overtures to Hamas, which runs part of the Palestinian
Authority and continues to refuse to recognise Israel. Such behaviour
has cost Turkey some support among Jewish Americans-formerly ardent
supporters of Turkey as a moderate Muslim republic that is friendly
to Israel. Some even worry that a freshly insulted Turkey will not
heed America's opinion when, for example, it thinks about crossing
the border into Iraq to pound Kurdish fighters.
It is hardly surprising that Turkey is feeling put-upon. Last year,
France's National Assembly passed a bill not only declaring that the
Armenian massacres constituted genocide, but making it a crime to
deny it. Had the bill made it into law this would have resulted in
an absurd situation in which Turkish law forbade mention of genocide
while French law forbade its denial, all during Turkey's application
to join the European Union. Turks complained that the French bill had
less to do with Armenians, and more to do with deterring Turkey's EU
membership. The mood has not improved since. France's new president,
Nicolas Sarkozy, is an outspoken opponent of Turkish membership.
Hurt feelings on both sides are pushing Turkey and the West apart:
Turkey feels mistreated, and acts in such a way. But the deal with Iran
and its pell-mell pursuit of Kurdish terrorists into Iraq antagonise
Americans and Europeans further. At the least, the panicky reaction
of the Bush administration over the genocide resolution shows that
policymakers realise that they can no longer take Turkey's friendship
for granted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Resentment greets Armenian genocide charge.
By VINCENT BOLAND
16 October 2007
Financial Times
Genocide is the most serious charge that can be levelled at any nation or people. For a country as adamant about its past as Turkey, the concept is unimaginable. Turkish children are taught that their country is among history's good guys - indeed, among history's victims. A focus on the republican period after 1923 means history books gloss over the messier decade of the 1910s.
This is why accusations that Ottoman-era Turks and their Kurdish allies committed genocide against the empire's Armenian citizens from 1915 to 1917 cause such bewilderment and resentment. Last week's decision by the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives to acknowledge the genocide had the added stain, from the Turkish point of view, of foreign politicians pronouncing on other people's history.
Turkey acknowledges that the Armenians were massacred. But it argues that so too were many Turks as the Ottoman empire - the original "sick man of Europe" - collapsed, and that many people died as the result of war, hunger and displacement. It argues also that there was no systematic attempt by the Ottoman government to eliminate the Armenians because of their ethnicity or religion - no genocide, in other words.
Many Turks, including successive governments, are convinced that archives around the world contain the evidence that will exonerate their forebears. Yet the weight of opinion among historians outside Turkey is that the archival evidence points to the Ottoman government's genocidal intent. It is possible that there are documents as yet undiscovered in archives that could disprove this thesis, but historians doubt nearly a century after the event that this will be the case.
Many Turks today believe the issue is used as a stick with which to beat modern Turkey, which did not exist at the time of the massacres. The sight of little Armenia proving more successful on this issue with world opinion than big-league Turkey is infuriating. "National pride is part of it," says Ibrahim Kalin, director of the Seta think-tank in Ankara. "Turks see it not as an issue that is debated as a matter of historical fact but as an issue to put pressure on Turkey. It's seen as an alliance of the Christian west against Muslim Turkey."
Turkey's official stance - that it is a question best addressed by historians - is increasingly difficult to sustain. Even the argument made by some Turks - that the circumstances of the crime do not fit the definition of genocide - is falling on deaf ears. With the historical consensus seemingly against the current Turkish position, the issue is political and diplomatic. Turkey has yet to adopt policies to address it in those terms.
"I wish it was a matter of the historical record," Mr Kalin says. "But at the end of the day this is a political issue."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ARMENIA 'GENOCIDE' VOTE IS SNUB TO BUSH
By Daniel Dombey in Washington
Financial Times, UK
Oct 11 2007
US legislators on Wednesday defied the Bush administration and angered
the Turkish government when they voted to describe the mass killings
of Armenians more than eight decades ago as genocide.
The 27-21 decision by the House of Representatives foreign affairs
committee, which paves the way for a vote in the full House in coming
weeks, came in spite of a warning from George W. Bush, president,
and his top officials that co-operation with Turkey and the fate of
US troops in Iraq could be at stake.
It also comes as the US seeks to convince Turkey not to carry out a
large-scale military incursion into northern Iraq to crack down on
Kurdish militants.
Proponents of the measure, which has vigorous support from the
Armenian-American population, argue that its call for Mr Bush to
"accurately characterise the systematic and deliberate annihilation
of 1.5m Armenians as genocide" is essential to putting the historical
record straight.
"The sad truth is that the modern government of Turkey refuses to
come to terms with this genocide," said Representative Christopher
Smith of New Jersey, at an emotionally charged session attended by
four survivors of the mass killings that began in 1915.
"Let us do this and be done with it," said Representative Brad Sherman
of California. "We will get a few angry words out of Ankara for a
few days, and then it's over."
But only hours before the committee voted Mr Bush warned that passage
of the resolution "would do great harm to our relations with a key
ally in Nato and in the global war on terror".
According to US commanders in Iraq, including Gen David Petraeus,
Robert Gates, defence secretary, said: "Access to airfields and to
the roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if this
resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they
will." He added that about 70 per cent of US air cargo going into
Iraq went through Turkey.
US officials say passage of the resolution by the full House will make
Washington's bid to convince Turkey not to launch a military incursion
into Iraq much harder. Public outrage against the Kurdish separatist
PKK has flared in the wake of an attack in which 13 soldiers were
killed on Sunday.
Washington's push for Turkey take a more collaborative approach on
combating PKK has also been complicated by the resignation of Joseph
Ralston, the retired US general who had been seeking to increase
Washington-Ankara co-operation against the militant group.
"For his own reasons he decided that he was going to be moving on,"
said Sean McCormack, state department spokesman, this week. "Any
continuing presence of the PKK or the continuing activities of the
PKK is not because what he did or did not do." He added that he was
not yet aware of a possible replacement for Gen Ralston.
.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Secretary of State Pelosi
The Armenian genocide doesn't belong in U.S. foreign policy right now.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 12:01 a.m.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, famous for donning a head scarf earlier this
year to commune for peace with the Syrians, has now concluded that this
is the perfect moment to pass a Congressional resolution condemning
Turkey for the Armenian genocide of 1915. Problem is, Turkey in 2007 has
it within its power to damage the growing success of the U.S. effort in
Iraq. We would like to assume this is not Speaker Pelosi's goal.
To be clear: We write that we would like to assume, rather than that we
do assume, because we are no longer able to discern whether the
Speaker's foreign-policy intrusions are merely misguided or are
consciously intended to cause a U.S. policy failure in Iraq.
Where is the upside in October 2007 to this Armenian resolution?
The bill is opposed by eight former U.S. Secretaries of State, including
Madeleine Albright. After Tom Lantos's House Foreign Affairs Committee
voted out the resolution last week, Turkey recalled its ambassador from
Washington. Turkey serves as a primary transit hub for U.S. equipment
going into both Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Kurdish terrorist group
PKK killed 13 Turkish conscripts last week near the border with Iraq,
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, asked the parliament to
approve a huge deployment of the army along the border, threatening an
incursion into Kurdish-controlled Iraq. This of course is the one
manifestly successful region of post-Saddam Iraq. In a situation
teetering on a knife-edge, President Bush has been asking Mr. Erdogan to
show restraint on the Iraq border.
Somehow, none of this is allowed to penetrate Speaker Pelosi's world.
She is offering various explanations for bringing the genocide
resolution to the House floor. "This isn't about the Erdogan
government," she says. "This is about the Ottoman Empire," last seen
more than 85 years ago. "Genocide still exists," insists Ms. Pelosi. "We
saw it in Rwanda; we see it now in Darfur."
Yes, but why now, with Turkey crucial to an Iraq policy that now has the
prospect of a positive outcome? The answer may be found in the
compulsive parochialism of the House's current edition of politicians,
mostly Democrats. California is home to the country's largest number of
politically active Armenians. Speaker Pelosi has many in her own
district. Mr. Lantos represents the San Francisco suburbs. The bill's
leading sponsors include Representatives Adam Schiff, George Radanovich
and Anna Eshoo, all from California.
Pointedly, Jane Harman, the Southern California Democrat who Speaker
Pelosi passed over for chair of the intelligence committee, wrote an
op-ed for the Los Angeles Times Friday, questioning the "timing" of the
resolution and asking why it is necessary to embarrass a "moderate
Islamic government in perhaps the most volatile region in the world."
Why indeed? Perhaps some intrepid reporter could put that question to
the three leading Democratic Presidential candidates, who are seeking to
inherit hands-on responsibility for U.S. policy in this cauldron.
Hillary Clinton has been a co-sponsor of the anti-Turk genocide
resolution, but would she choose to vote for it this week?
Back when Bill Clinton was President, Mr. Lantos took a different view.
"This legislation at this moment in U.S.-Turkish relations is singularly
counterproductive to our national interest," he said in September 2000,
when there was much less at stake in the Middle East. According to
Reuters, he added that the resolution would "humiliate and insult"
Turkey and that the "unintended results would be devastating."
If Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos want to take down U.S. policy in Iraq to
tag George Bush with the failure, they should have the courage to walk
through the front door to do it. Bringing the genocide resolution to the
House floor this week would put a terrible event of Armenia's past in
the service of America's bitter partisanship today. It is mischievous at
best, catastrophic at worst, and should be tabled.
Copyright (c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Turkey's War on the Truth
Washington Post
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, October 16, 2007; A19
It goes without saying that the House resolution condemning Turkey for
the "genocide" of Armenians from 1915 to 1923 will serve no earthly
purpose and that it will, to say the least, complicate if not severely
strain U.S.-Turkey relations. It goes without saying, also, that the
Turks are extremely sensitive on the topic and, since they are helpful
in the war in Iraq and are a friend to Israel, that their feelings
ought to be taken into account. All of this is true, but I would feel
a lot better about condemning this resolution if the argument wasn't
so much about how we need Turkey and not at all about the truthfulness
of the matter.
Of even that, I have some doubt. The congressional resolution
repeatedly employs the word "genocide," a term used by many scholars.
But Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish emigre who coined the term in
1943, clearly had in mind what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. If
that is the standard -- and it need not be -- then what happened in
the collapsing Ottoman Empire was something short of genocide. It was
plenty bad -- maybe as many as 1.5 million Armenians perished, many of
them outright murdered -- but not all Armenians everywhere in what was
then Turkey were as calamitously affected. The substantial Armenian
communities in Constantinople, Smyrna and Aleppo were largely spared.
No German city could make that statement about its Jews.
Still, by any name, what was begun in 1915 is unforgivable and, one
hopes, unforgettable. Yet it was done by a government that no longer
exists -- the so-called Sublime Porte of the Ottomans, with its
sultan, concubines, eunuchs and the rest. Even in 1915, it was an
anachronism, no longer able to administer its vast territory -- much
of the Middle East and the Balkans. The empire was crumbling. The
so-called Sick Man of Europe was breathing its last. Its troops were
starving, and, both in Europe and the Middle East, indigenous peoples
were declaring their independence and rising in rebellion. Among them
were the Armenians, an ancient people who had been among the first to
adopt Christianity. By the end of the 19th century, they were engaged
in guerrilla activity. By World War I, they were aiding Turkey's
enemy, Russia. Within Turkey, Armenians were feared as a fifth column.
So contemporary Turkey is entitled to insist that things are not so
simple. If you use the word genocide, it suggests the Holocaust -- and
that is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire. But Turkey has gone
beyond mere quibbling with a word. It has taken issue with the facts
and in ways that cannot be condoned. Its most famous writer, the Nobel
Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, was arrested in 2005 for
acknowledging the mass killing of Armenians. The charges were
subsequently dropped, and although Turkish law has been modified in
some ways, it nevertheless remains dangerous business for a Turk to
talk openly and candidly about what happened in 1915.
It just so happens that I am an admirer of Turkey. Its modern leaders,
beginning with the truly remarkable Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, have done a
Herculean job of bringing the country from medievalism to modernity
without, it should be noted, the usual bloodbath. (The Russians, for
instance, did not manage that feat.) Furthermore, I can appreciate
Turkey's palpable desire to embrace both modernity and Islam and to
show that such a combination is not oxymoronic. (Ironically, having a
dose of genocide in your past -- the United States and the Indians,
Germany and the Jews, etc. -- is hardly "not Western.") And I think,
furthermore, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have spiked the
House resolution in deference to Turkey's immense strategic importance
to the United States. She's the speaker now, for crying out loud, not
just another House member.
But for too long the Turks have been accustomed to muscling the truth,
insisting either through threats or punishment that they and they
alone will write the history of what happened in 1915. They are
continuing along this path now, with much of official Ankara
threatening this or that -- crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan, for
instance -- if the House resolution is not killed. But it may yet
occur to someone in the government that Turkey's tantrums have turned
an obscure -- nonbinding! -- congressional resolution into yet another
round of tutorials on the Armenian tragedy of 1915. Call it genocide
or call it something else, but there is only one thing to call
Turkey's insistence that it and its power will determine the truth:
unacceptable.
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Turkey and the Armenians
Today's denial is tomorrow's holocaust
Haaretz
12/10/2007
By Yossi Sarid
Congressman Adam Schiff, who proposed the resolution to name the
Armenian massacre a genocide, is Jewish. The Jewish nation should be
grateful for Schiff's initiative, for he has saved Jewish honor in
America, Israel and everywhere. He restored our humane image, in
contrast to the cynics and genocide deniers who are forever demanding
payment for being perpetual victims.
Congressman Schiff is following in the footsteps of another Jew, Henry
Morgenthau, who served as U.S. ambassador in Turkey in those days. He
called the massacre "the greatest crime in modern history."
Schiff is also the student of another Jew, Franz Werfel, who on his way
to the Land of Israel stopped in Damascus and was appalled to see "the
starving, mutilated and sick Armenian refugee children." He published
the novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" (1933), which shocked the world.
In 1918 Shmuel Talkovsky, then secretary of Haim Weizmann, wrote with
Weizmann's approval: "Is there any nation whose fate is more similar to
ours than the Armenians?"
But in Israel today there are Jews who are less than Jewish and Zionists
who are less than Zionist - including heads of state and heads of
government. Denying another nation's Holocaust is no less ugly than
denying ours. It is also dangerous. Today's denial is tomorrow's
Holocaust. The Armenian genocide wasn't the first in this era. The
German imperial army slaughtered 100,000 Namibians in 1904. In 1915, the
Armenian genocide began; the Ottomans killed 1.5 million of them in
various ways. If the world had risen up in protest against the genocide
of the Namibians and Armenians, the Holocaust of the Jews might also
have been averted. This is not a mere assumption; it's probably a fact.
A week before invading Poland, Hitler addressed his officers (August 24,
1939): "It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European
civilization will say about me ... I have ordered my Death-Head
Formation to kill mercilessly and without compassion men, women and
children of Polish derivation and language. Who, after all, speaks today
of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
Such was Hitler's calming message to his troops.
The next time some Israel hater - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example -
denies the Jewish Holocaust, and we raise a hue and cry about it, there
will be some self-righteous Gentiles ready to say, "You're right, but we
have our own Turkeys."
As natural and historic victims, we should be the ones to spread the
message from one end of the world to another: what happened to us can
happen again, to us and to the people of Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia,
Sudan, Burma.
There is no need to compare between holocausts to recognize other
nations' suffering.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A resolution too far
Oct 18th 2007
From The Economist print editionA congressional vote in Washington that could jeopardise Turkey's path westwards THE Turks are a proud, prickly people, easily offended by criticism. That much is clear from the row over a resolution, passed by a committee of the United States House of Representatives on October 10th, calling the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 genocide. The full House has yet to vote on the resolution. But Turkey has reacted angrily, recalling its ambassador. It is talking of cutting military ties and even denying the Americans use of the Incirlik airbase that is vital for the supply of their troops in Iraq (see article). As such threats demonstrate, Turkey is not just an angry ally. It is also a vital one, with a population of 75m and the world's 19th-biggest economy. It is a strategically important hinge between Europe and Asia; it has the biggest army in NATO after America's; it forms a crucial energy corridor to the West; and it borders on such awkward places as Iran and Syria as well as Iraq. Moreover, it is a rare example in the Muslim world of a lively, secular democracy. Yet internal tensions are exacerbated when clumsy outsiders intervene. This year has seen a series of clashes between the army and secularists on one side and the mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the other, culminating in a big AK win in the election in July. Mr Erdogan is trying manfully to keep Turkey on the path towards membership of the European Union, even though many Europeans have become openly hostile. He also wants to preserve good relations with America despite renewed fighting with guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), some based in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. This is a bad moment for America to pick a fight over something that happened 90 years ago, before modern Turkey even existed. That is not to deny it is a good idea for countries to face up to their past, especially when it was as violent as that of the Ottomans in the early 20th century. Germany has been admirably open about admitting the sins of the Nazi period; Japan has been less candid. It would be good for modern, democratic Turkey to come to terms with the terrible treatment of Armenians in the first world war (as also, in later times, of other minorities, including Greeks, Alevis and Kurds). In recent years, there have been encouraging signs: a few historians' conferences, an attempt to improve relations with Armenia, growing acceptance of the Kurdish language and occasional talk of amending Article 301 of the penal code. This makes “insulting Turkishness” a criminal offence and is used to shut down discussion of the Armenian genocide. But the adoption of a highly political resolution in America's Congress is the worst possible way to encourage more steps in the right direction. Rather, it would serve only to fan the flames of Turkish nationalism and leave liberals within Turkey who want more open debate about the past even more exposed. Those in Congress who are pushing this resolution have little interest in Turkey or even Armenia, but a lot in the wealthy Armenian-American constituents who are lobbying them. It is telling that many Turkish Armenians, and even the Patriarch of the Armenian church of Istanbul, have not welcomed the House resolution. One blunder after another Recognising the damaging repercussions in Turkey as well as for Turkish-American relations, the Bush administration has been fighting to stop the resolution's passage. It has mustered all eight living former secretaries of state, both Democrat and Republican, to argue against it. This is testimony to the strategic importance of Turkey. But it also reflects the especially sensitive time. This week the Turkish parliament gave its approval for a possible cross-border military incursion into northern Iraq to root out PKK terrorists based there. That would be another blunder. The Turks' frustration over northern Iraq is understandable. In the past two weeks alone, some 20 Turkish soldiers have been killed by the PKK. Repeated requests to the Iraqis and local Kurdish authorities to clamp down on the group have been ignored. Yet an invasion would not only upset the most stable region of Iraq but also be unlikely to work, as even some Turkish generals recognise. It would be better for the Americans to do more to counter the PKK in northern Iraq—and for Turkey to renew its earlier efforts to improve the lot of Kurds in its south-east. Keeping Turkey on its pro-Western course is vital, not just for Iraq, but for the sake of all Turks, including the country's own big Kurdish population. Recent rows have helped to turn Turkish public opinion sharply against both the European Union and the United States, a situation that countries such as Iran and Russia are all too ready to exploit. Pressure to scrap Article 301 and allow open debate in Turkey should continue. But the House resolution is not the way to do it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Sunday Herald, UK
Oct 28 2007
Turkey has to grasp the past to survive
By Ian Bell
Comment
MY WIFE has no idea where her grandmother was born. Nothing
remarkable about that. In the long century of emigres and immigrants,
when the ships were arriving or escaping, many people grew vague
about half-remembered farmsteads, deserted villages or tenement rooms
in forgotten ports. It happened.
My wife is entitled to be a little more precise, though. "No idea",
means none, nothing. Not a scrap of evidence. Once upon a time,
someone eradicated a large part of her ancestry. This also happened.
Just to ensure that a daughter's daughter would be forever mystified,
they spent the best part of the long century insisting, sometimes
with extraordinary violence, that no such eradication was ever
contemplated. Just to say so is, to them, an outrage. In their
country there is a law forbidding traitors, fools, journalists and
novelists from mentioning the thing that never happened.
If that isn't enough, until last week my wife could only guess at
Nana's given name. Imagine that.
Some heroic research by my sister-in-law says that once there may
have been a girl called Vehanoush Astrick Tchakrian. She had a
beautiful smile.
For years, nevertheless, the glorious myth persisted that this
Vehanoush was actually "Venus" in some perfect, impossible, imagined
past. My wife calculates that Nana spoke nine languages, not because
she was a prodigy of a polyglot - though I bet she was - but because
picking up a tongue around the Med basin was like picking up
insurance. Armenians can never be too careful.
If you believe Turkey's journalist-slaughtering ultra-nationalists,
1.5 million of that troublesome ethnic group may possibly have
perished in 1915 thanks to an administrative mishap no-one bothers to
explain. You know the script: troubled times, faults on both sides,
regrettable things happen.
Armenians remember swaddled children with their throats cut for a
whim on the long marches through the desert. Memorialised are the
girls raped in ditches and bartered to some local peasant for
"marriage". The lucky ones were tossed into ravines.
American church people and diplomats bore witness to some of it.
Britain, France and Germany got their reports in the embassy bags.
They came for the educated first: for the teachers, doctors, lawyers
and, yes, the journalists. Sometimes, the men were merely butchered
in the street. The point, not overlooked by a junior Austrian
demagogue, was to eliminate the witnesses.
Why does my wife have no knowledge of her grandmother's birthplace?
Because hundreds of villages, many towns, and one great city were
simply wiped from every map. The next time you take a package holiday
to the country that is gracious heir to Byzantium, ask a single
question. Ask when the tours through the rubble of Van begin.
Still, here's my most complicated, and least complicated, point. Do I
believe that modern Turkey, and modern Turks, should be held
responsible for any of this? No, not once, not ever. The Ottoman
imperium in its last debauched days slaughtered the Armenians.
Ataturk - who neither denied nor diminished the crime - left a finer
legacy.
How is it, then, that holocaust denial has become an article of faith
for Ataturk's children? Leave the ancient dead and the forgotten past
behind, for now. The Congress of the United States of America, the
last superpower, has just been bullied with threats and ill-disguised
Turkish menaces merely for suggesting that genocide must always be
admitted, named, and accepted.
Both George Bush and his Democrat rivals have come round to the view
that any slaughter can be overlooked if a strategic airbase is at
stake. How can you resupply the unholy Iraq adventure, or bomb Iran
if Turkey's national pride is wounded? (And wounded by a fact of
history, a fact for which modern Turkey is in no sense held
responsible. Strategic infrastructure versus whitened Armenian bones:
no contest.) History is not quite done with playful ironies. Turkey
has enacted the role of injured innocent with some panache in recent
weeks. All of a sudden, America is in no mood to argue if a certain
prized ally desires to remove a stone from her shoe. Ankara says it
must solve the Kurdish problem once and for all. A head nods in the
White House. Killing follows.
At this point, Armenians probably lose the capacity for laughter, or
for tears. Long before the Jewish people were caused to suffer and
die, Armenians were forced to learn these lessons. Hilarity has its
limits, however.
First, there is the issue of the Kurdish enclave. Wasn't that the
single success story of the Iraq experiment, the one viable, peaceful
example of a semi-democracy in the aftermath of Saddam? And the
current plan is to allow Turkey (biggest army within marching
distance of Paris or London) to go on the rampage Genius. So the home
of the US State Department isn't called Foggy Bottom for nothing,
then?
I mentioned history, and irony. When the women and children of
Armenia were being dragged through the deserts, they had a pair of
tormentors. One was the Turkish state, the other comprised an ethnic
group making themselves useful, in those days, to Ottoman Turkey.
They stole homes, farms, livestock and (much the same thing, it
appears) fertile girls. Screams of grief and agony, it is remembered,
could be heard all over the hills and valleys. The Kurds did that.
Now those same Kurds fight the Turks. They have my support, too. Are
we still pursuing irony? Simultaneously I support the accession of
the great Turkish state to the European Union, and as soon as
possible.
"Possible" hinges, however, on the ability of real democracies to
acknowledge, accept and - who knows? - apologise for the past. If
Ankara continues to insist that the Armenian genocide is a strange
conspiracy, let me into the Ottoman archives.
Then fix the constitution. The European ideal and laughable legalese
invoking a nation's shallow pride will never cohere. In my country,
journalists are not killed in the street for an opinion; generals are
fired when they grow over-mighty; we understand genocide and (since
we invented most of it) geopolitics. We do not tolerate a barbarism
such as article 301, underpinning the Turkish state, threatening free
expression.
That sounds patronising, no doubt. Clever of you to notice. Proud
Turks, like slow Americans, have very thin skins. Armenians could
meanwhile turn victimhood into a folk dance. But Armenians are the
actual raped victims of someone else's proud foreign policies.
Someone killed 1.5 million versions of someone's beloved Vehanoush.
Those multitudes of Armenians died, in essence, because no-one cared.
This week, with another century gone, the Kurds have become the ducks
in the shooting gallery. So why has this liberal (you think)
non-interventionist got nothing to say about Iraq, and echoes?
Before you dare to hurt you must calculate the quantities of hurt. In
the case of Armenia, no-one bothered to count.
When Turkey undergoes purgation, as it must, something vital will
take place. That truth will transform us all. At Europe's heart,
remember, is a reunited Germany with a history, dark and bloody, we
do not yet understand. The Bush White House is grubby, but tawdry and
dull: it will pass. So here's an idea. Armenia's past is Turkey's
future. Does Turkey want, need, or remember how to grasp a future?
Let's have two countries come home simultaneously.
My wife has no idea where her grandmother was born. Can someone
please, once, explain that odd, unspeakable fact?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FROM THE TIMES ARCHIVES: 'THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES'
The Times, London
Oct 11 2007
How The Times reported the story on Friday October 8, 1915
>From The Times, Friday October 8, 1915
THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES
EXTERMINATING A RACE
A RECORD OF HORRORS
To one who remembers the rejoicings which welcomed the bloodless
Turkish Revolution of 1908, the fraternization of Moslem and Christian,
the confidence in a better future for the Armenians which survived even
the Adana massacre of 1909, the story of the systematic persecution
of the Armenians of Turkey is a bitter tale to tell.
Talaat Bey and his extremist allies have out-Hamided Abdul Hamid.
They have even shocked their German friends, thus attaining eminence in
"frightfulness" to which the "Red Sultan" never soared.
When the Committee of Union and Progress finally decided to mobilize
its forces against the Triple Entente, one of its first steps was
to make an end of "all that nonsense about Armenian reforms," as the
Grand Vizier styled the latest reform scheme imposed by the Powers.
One of the two European Inspectors-General, who were to watch over
the Administration of the six Eastern Provinces of Turkey-in-Asia,
had already set forth on his journey, greeted on his way by salaaming
officials and escorted by respectful gendarmes. Then came the
mobilization of the Turkish Army, and before he had even reached his
destination he was bundled off, returning the Constantinople with a
minimum of pomp and ceremony. At once occasional raids on Armenian
villages began to be reported from the "Six Villayets".
No massacre took place during the Turkish mobilization or the early
stages of the Caucasus campaign. It was not until Enver Pasha's Army
had invaded Russian territory, and another Turkish force, composed in
part of Kurdish irregulars, had invaded Azerbaijan, that massacres
began. At Ardahan the Turkish regulars are said by the Russians to
have killed 15 civilians during their brief occupation of the town, but
their irregular allies and bands of Turkish fedais committed horrible
crimes at Oity, Ardanush, Artum, and other places which they occupied,
unchecked by the regulars. Armenians were thrown over cliffs, their
women violated and abducted, their children frequently Islamised. The
invasion of Azerbaijan was attended by similar excesses. The bulk of
the Armenian population, after suffering great privations, escaped
into Russian territory. According to Russian newspapers and American
missionaries, over 2,000 were killed, often by order of Turkish
Consuls, in North-West Persia. Kurdish tribesmen committed gruesome
atrocities near Bayesid, and, when the worst of the winter was over,
began to raid the Armenian villages near Van.
The defeat of Sary Kamish, inflicted by an army which included many
Armenians, had infuriated Enver's ruthless temper. The systematic
massacre of the 25,000 Armenians of the Bashkala district, of whom
less than 10 per cent are said by Russian newspapers to have escaped
slaughter or forced conversion, appears to have been ordered and
carried out at this period.
The full description of the horrors that ensued along the frontier
must be left to our Russian allies. Suffice it to say that late in
April the Armenians in the Van district who had collected arms to
defend themselves against the Kurds before the war were attacked
by Kurds and Turkish gendarmes. In some places they were massacred;
in others they more than held their own, and finally they captured
the town of Van and took a bloody vengeance on their enemies. Early
in May a Russo-Armenian army entered Van.
TALAAT BEY'S POLICY
It is said by the Turks in their defence that the decision to deport
the Eastern Armenians was only arrived at after the discovery of
an Armenian plot in Constantinople and after the Van outbreak. But
the Armenians executed in Constantinople in April were men of the
Hintchak society who had been in prison for over a year, and the
deportation or massacre of Armenians had begun at many places before
the Van Armenians were criminal enough to help themselves. There can
be no doubt that Enver, who has never shrunk from violent methods,
approved of the policy that was adopted. Commanding officers in
the provinces received orders in April and May authorising them to
deport all individuals or families whose presence might be regarded
as politically or militarily dangerous, and in the case of some of
the Cilician Armenians, deportation had begun earlier. But Talaat, who
was in all probability the chief mover in the expulsion of Greeks from
Western Anatolia, who has never scrupled to lie to an Ambassador or to
encourage pro-Turkish intrigue in the dominions of friendly Powers,
is the chief author of these crimes. "I intend to prevent any talk
of Armenian autonomy for 50 years" and "The Armenians are a...race;
their disappearance would be no loss" are sayings attributed to him on
excellent authority. He has had worthy supporters among the extremists
of the Committee of Union and Progress, such as Mukhlis Bey, Carusso
Effendi and his Jewish revolutionary supporters, Midhat Shukri and
others, among officials such as the Valis of Diarbekr and Angora,
and among the officers of gendarmerie, who, if one-tenth of the
tales told by European and American refugees is true, have cast off
all trace of the European training which French and British officers
laboriously tried to instil in them and have too often become little
better than licentious banditti.
MASSACRE AREAS
Eastern Anatolia, Cilicia, and the Anti-Taurus region have been the
scene of the worst cruelties on the part of the authorities and the
population. In many cases the massacres were absolutely unprovoked.
Thus at Marsovan, where there is an important American college,
the authorities early in June ordered the Armenians to meet outside
the town. They surrounded them there and the police and an armed mob
killed, according to the Americans, 1,200 of the younger and more
active Armenians whom the local Committee leaders and the gendarmerie
most feared. The richer Armenians were allowed to avoid death by
conversion to Islam, for which doubtful privilege they paid heavily.
The poorer in some cases begged to be allowed to deny their faith and
thus save their families, but as they had no money they were killed, or
exiled. The younger women were distributed among the rabble. The rest
of the community were driven across country to Northern Mesopotamia.
At Angora the Vali arrested the Armenian manager of the Imperial
Ottoman Bank, who was sent away in a carriage and killed by the Vali's
orders some miles from the town. Mukhlis Bey, a prominent member of
the Committee of Union and Progress, then produced an order from the
Central Executive of the Committee ordering the slaughter of the
most prominent Armenians whether Gregorian or Catholic. The order
was served on the Military Commandant, who refused to obey it.
Mukhlis then armed the rabble and 683 unarmed Armenians were killed.
Many were Catholics, whose cruel fate is known to have aroused vigorous
protests on the part of the Vatican.
At Bitlis and Mush a large number, according to some accounts 12,000
Armenians, many of them women, are reported to have been shot or
drowned. At Sivas, Kaisari, and Diarbekr there were many executions,
and several Armenian villages are reported completely wiped out. At
Mosul the unhappy Armenians who were brought from the north in gangs
were set upon by the mob. Many were killed and turks and Kurds came
from as far as the Persian border to buy the women.
At Urfa, where the male Allied subjects formerly resident in Syria
and one of two prisoners of war are now interned by Djemal Pasha's
orders, the first massacre took place in the third week of August. It
was witnessed by the some of the Allied women and children who
recently escaped from Syria. An English girl of 10 years of age saw an
Armenian's brains blown out and the bodies of women and children burnt
with kerosene. Several smaller massacres followed the first outbreak,
in which about 150 Armenians were killed. The military took no part in
it, but left full freedom to the rabble, who slightly wounded several
French prisoners who has been allowed to walk in the town. It is not
surprising that the British, French, and Russian women who have escaped
from Uría should express the liveliest apprehensions as to the fate of
their menfolk prisoners in what is probably the most fanatical town
in Turkey, and the scene of the burning of about 6,000 Armenians of
both sexes in the Cathedral during the Hamidian massacres.
A DESPERATE RESISTANCE
The massacred Armenians had mostly given up their arms in accordance
with the advice of their clergy. At four widely separated places
resistance was offered. At Shaban Karahissar in North-East Anatolia,
the Armenians took up arms, held off the Turkish troops for some
time, and were finally overwhelmed. Some 4,000 were believed to have
been killed or sold - the fate of the women and children - at this
place. At Kharput, on hearing of the intention of the authorities to
deport them, the Armenians rose on June 3, and for a week held the
town. They were then overpowered by troops with artillery, and were
mostly killed. The outbreak at Zeitun seems to have taken place in
March and to have been a very trivial affair. The Armenians of the
town of Zeitun, though formerly a turbulent race, handed over the
few insurgents to the Turks, hoping thus to be spared, but Fakhry
Pasha, the author of the second Adana massacre, nevertheless killed
a few of the townsmen on the spot, and may have drafted the rest into
labour battalions. The women, children, and infirm were sent to Zor -
described by a most competent authority as a "human dustbin" where
they are reported to by dying in large numbers.
The Armenians of Jebel Musa were ordered to quit their homes late in
July. Believing very naturally that the Turks proposed to make away
with them, they rose in revolt to the number of 600. Though poorly
provided with arms, they held out for a month against about 4,000
Turkish troops. Their losses were slight. Those of the Turks, who
seem to have been troops of inferior quality, are said by refugees
from Syria to have amounted to from 300 to 400. The fighting was
ruthlessly waged. The Turks carried off some 20 Armenian women and
children, and executed 2 prisoners before the Armenian position. The
Armenians retaliated by executing a Turkish major, a notable who had
plundered one of their villages, and other prisoners whom they took.
Ammunition was running low early in September, and a massacre seemed
inevitable when French warships and a British vessel arrived and took
off the Armenians to the number of 4,000, mostly women and children.
It may be noted that the only massacres reported in the Arab countries
- namely, north of Baghdad, where about 1,000 Armenians are said
on Armenian authority to have been killed at the end of their long
journey from the North; and at Kebusie, in the Homs district, where
a body of 250 Armenian deportees were killed, forcibly converted or,
in the case of the girls, sold - were committed by the military,
apparently Turks and Kurds.
DEPORTATION OR STARVATION
It remains to describe Talaat Bey's methods in detail. Massacre was
followed by a crueller system of persecution than Abdul Hamid ever
invented. The Red Sultan's abominations were seldom accompanied by the
wholesale deportation of the survivors; the violation and abduction of
women and the conversion of children, though sadly frequent in some
places, were by no means general in the massacres of 1894-1896. Then
the wild beast was allowed to run amok for 24 hours, and was then
usually chained up.
In Talaat Bey's campaign the preliminary massacre, which was sometimes
omitted, was followed by the separation of the able-bodied men from
their women folk. The former were drafted into labour battalions
or simply disappeared. The women, children, and old men were next
driven slowly across country. They were permitted to take no carts,
baggage animals, or any large stock of provisions with them. They
were shepherded from place to place by gendarmes, who violated some
of the women, sold others, and robbed most. Infirm or aged folk,
women great with child, and children were driven along till they
dropped and died by the way. Gendarmes who returned to Alexandretta
described with glee to Europeans how they robbed the fugitives. If
these refused to give up their money their escort sometimes pushed
them into streams or abandoned them in desolate places.
A European who witnessed the exodus of some of the Armenians of
Cilicia says that most were footsore, all looked half starved, and
no able-bodied man could be seen among them. At Osmanic on the road
between Aleppo and Adana they were given only 8 hours' notice by the
town crier to make ready for their departure. The French and British
refugees from Urfa saw the bodies of "hundreds" of women and children
lying by the road and met another of these lamentable half-starved
caravans. An American who accompanied a group of Armenian exiles from
Malatia reports that the road to Urfa was marked all along its course
by the bodies of those who had died. Travellers by the Anatolian
Railway report that the hills near Bilejik Geive, and other stations
in the hinterland of Brusa were crowded with Armenians from Brusa,
Ismid, and other settlements near Constantinople, who had no shelter
and were begging their bread. Large bodies of the exiles are said to
have been simply led into the desert south of the Euphrates and left
there to starve.
THE TALLEST POPPIES
The policy which lost the Committee leaders Macedonia and is as old
as King Tarquin, seems to have been revived by Talaat. Just who had
been amnestied fell frequent victims to the bravi of the Committee,
so now the Armenians who had cooperated most loyally with the Turkish
Revolutionaries were among the first to feel the weight of Talaat's
hand.
Haladijian Effendi, ex-Minister of Public Works, was arrested in
Constantinople after the discovery of an alleged Armenian plot, and in
spite of his friendly relations with the Committee, of which he was a
member, and his friendship with Talaat and Djavid Beys, was hurried
into Anatolia, where he has disappeared. It is not known whether he
is dead or alive. Garo Pasdermatjian, who took part in the attack on
the Imperial Ottoman Bank in 1896, and was one of Talaat's intimates,
was also arrested. So were Vartkes, as popular a member of the Turkish
Chamber of Deputies as Pasdermatjian, Aghnuni, the very able leader
if the Dashnakist Society in Constantinople, Zohrab Effendi, M.P for
Constantinople, an able but unpopular lawyer, who belonged to the
Committee Party, Vartan Papazian, and other Armenians, several of
whom were members of Parliament.
According to Armenian refugees from Syria, whose story is largely
borne out by independent evidence, several of the prisoners arrived
at Urfa in July. They were there entertained to dinner by the Chief
of Police, who during the meal received a telegram from the Vali of
Diarbekr bidding him send the prisoners to Diarbekr at once. They
started before midnight, and early next morning were killed on the
way by 'brigands'. Zohrab is known to have met his fate there, and
it is believed that Aghuni, Vartkes, Papazian and Pasdermatiijian
died with him. Of Aghnuni's death and that of Vartkes and Papazian
there seems no doubt. A number of priests and at least one bishop
were reported executed by military courts.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN SOLD
Torture has been frequently used in the case of Armenian prisoners and
suspects. The sale by Bird's police of Armenian children of both sexes
to the keepers of disorderly houses and Turks of bad moral character
has provoked protest in Constantinople. The object of the conversion
of children reported from some districts and the very general sale
of women and girls appears to be political. Foreigners believe that
Talaat has countenanced these crimes with the object of breaking up
the strong social structure of the Armenian community in Turkey.
There are Turcophils who aver that the Armenians do not really object
to such proceedings. One is reminded of a youthful and "highly
well-born" traveller who, returning from Macedonia in the days of
band warfare, reported as proof of Ottoman lenity that he had seen
Slav girls dancing with Turkish irregulars. This cruel comedy had, of
course, been arranged by an officer of gendarmerie, for the average
Christian peasant girl in Macedonia would as soon dance with a Turk
as an Anglo-Indian lady would consent to divert an Afghan with the
danse du ventre. The belief that Armenians "do not mind" is a cruel
falsehood. The Armenian woman of the country towns is nowadays often
quite well educated and always strictly brought up, and her sufferings
are doubtless as great as those of the average English or French
farmer's daughter would be were she subjected to similar cruelty.
GERMAN AND TURKISH PROTESTS
The attempts of the American Ambassador to procure some alleviation of
the lot of Armenians have thus far proved unsuccessful. Mr Morganthau,
in the opinion of good observers, wasted too much diplomatic energy
on behalf of the Zionists of Palestine, who were in no danger of
massacre, to have any force to spare. Talaat and Bedri simply own that
persecuting Armenians amuses them and turn a deaf ear to American
pleadings. German and Austro-Hungarian residents in Turkey at first
approved of the punishment of Armenian "traitors", but the methods of
the Turkish extremists have sickened even Prussian stomachs. True the
Jewish Baron von Oppendeim, now in Syria, has been preaching massacre,
and the German Consular officials al Aleppo and Alexandretta have
followed suit, perhaps with the idea of planting German colonists in
the void left b the disappearance of the Armenians when the war is
over. But the German Government has grown nervous. On August 31 the
German and Austro-Hungarian Ambassadors protested to the Grand Vizier
against the massacre of Armenians and demanded a written communication
to the effects that neither of the Government had any connexion with
these crimes. Turkey has not, so far, given her Allies a certificate
of unblemished character, and the bestowal of the Ordro pour la Merite
on Envor Pahsa by the Kaiser is not likely to give the impression
that Germany is in earnest.
There has been some Turkish protests against these abominations. The
Turks of Aintab refused to permit the exile of the local Armenians.
One of the Turkish Provincial Governors-General, who name had best
not be mentioned lest he be transferred to another post - or world -
has saved many exiles from starvation. Rahmi Boy, the bold Vali of
Smyrna who has treated the interned British and French residents of the
town right well, has repeatedly protested to the Porto against these
crimes and has refused to hand over suspected Armenians for trial. The
Sheikh-ul-Islam has salved his conscience by a tardy resignation,
and Djahid and Djavid Boys have uttered plaintive protests when it
was too late. In a few days' time Parliament will meet and Talaat
and his colleagues will then explain and defend their Armenian policy
to the House. One can imagine what line their defence will follow -
the necessity of securing national unity at this critical hour,
the importance of checking dangerous and unpatriotic agitation,
the deplorable crimes committed by the Armenians, the sufferings
of tortured Muslims under British and Russian rule, and much more
rhetoric of this kind. One cannot, unfortunately, imagine the Chamber
of Deputies refusing to vote the fullest confidence in Talaat and
Enver. Massacres will probably cease and the Armenians to be left to
starve quietly. |
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