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Turkey runs, Turkey hides, Turkey guilty of Genocide
“A throat slit in Paris is called a murder, 50,000 throats slit in the East and it is a question.” -Victor Hugo
On the evening of January 26th the Portland Art Museum's “Sultan’s Ball” –a $250 black tie affair celebrating the opening of Khalili’s Ottoman exhibit “Empire of the Sultans”-was treated to hours of demonstrations by local descendants and survivors of Turkey's Genocidal campaign in the Eastern Mediterranean. Greeks from Cyprus and Pontus in a brotherhood of sorrows with the other maligned and dismembered Ancient peoples of the East the Armenians, the Assyrians and the Kurds chanted and tweaked the faded consciousness of Portland’s elite collaborator exhibit patrons. “You can afford a conscience” screamed an Armenian American from Salem, Oregon. “The Legacy of the Turks and the Ottoman Turks is slavery, torture and the race extermination of Greeks and Armenians I hope you enjoy your evening its on the dead Greeks and Armenians” cried a Greek American PSU student. The exhibit is supported by deep pockets the American Turkish Council, the American Friends of Turkey (a depository of Death Merchants and retired American military officers and CIA operatives), Fred Myer, and Portland State University's Turkish Studies Program-funded directly by the Turkish government. The exhibit and the brochures and lectures accompanying the exhibit exalt the Ottoman Turkish “multiculturalism” a historical timeline in the published brochure has the gall to caption the American Declaration of Independence directly above a portrait of Turk autocrat Selim the Grim. The historical record of the true legacy of the Turks and their Sultans is in direct contradiction to this exhibit's attempt to sanitize Turkey's rap sheet of transnational Crimes Against Humanity. Don't take my word for it simply ask the Kurds, ask the Greeks, ask the Assyrians, ASK THE ARMENIANS!
The Ottoman Empire was commandeered by a nomadic tribe originating from Central Asia whose armies steamrolled, and through forced assimilation of conquered subjects destroyed indigenous cultures and depleted indigenous populations from the mountains of Kurdistan in Eastern Asia Minor to the Greek and Serbian homelands in the Balkans. For the Turks human slavery was protected until the 20th Century, Christian minorities in the occupied lands lived in enclaves and were subject to a head tax that literally was enforced with the Turkish punishment of decapitation. Pre-teen boys were basic human commodities that fulfilled the lustful desires of Ottoman tax registers, and taken away from their parents were forced into a life of servitude in the Sultans praetorian guard- (the Janissaries). The printing press was officially outlawed in Ottoman Turkey until the 19th century and endures brutal official censors to this very day (some recent examples include the arrest and detainment of Turkish author Nadire Mater for”insulting the military” the Kurdish daily Ozgurluk is published in exile and Turkish newspapers are subject to police raids and state terror (see Kurdish intellectual and poet Yasar Kemal’s editorial “Cloud of Lies” published in Der Spiegel.) By the 19th Century internal revolutions by oppressed enclaves in mainland Greece, Serbia, in Kurdistan, and Bulgaria led to nominal independence from the Ottoman political system. The Greek revolution of 1821 was dearly won by revolutionary Greek guerrillas –the kephts-who in their mountain steadfasts liberated the Ancient Greek city of Athens and the Greek lands of Peloponessos and Attiki from 400 years of Ottoman political oppression. The Bulgars paid a heavy price for their independence with thousands of dismembered and mutilated peasants in macabre human hillsides. British statesman Gladstone noted “I am ashamed to call myself a member of the human race since the Turks are also human” By 1912 and 1913 the whole of the Balkans had won its right to self-determination. From the Macedonian region, there came two Turks who went on to eliminate forever the pesky minorities and build a Turkey for the Turks. Talat Pasha and Kemal (later to be named Ataturk) –the founder of the “Republic of Turkey.”
Both Talat and K. Ataturk were instrumental in implementing the part pogrom of the Young Turk Party<Ittihad ve Terrakki>, the so-called party of Union and Progress. The party was formed in 1908 on the slogan of equality and fraternity but by the dawn of WWI it was transformed into a racist terror network ultimately becoming the undisputed government of Turkey and became bent on creating a "Turkey for the Turks.” The first step involved the extermination of the indigenous people of the region that traditionally followed the Christian faith-Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians-through the clever use of Islam and collaborator muftis and hodjas to incite hatred among their beleaguered Turks who owed their misfortunes to this ruling Young Turk Party. Backroom deals sealed with the German government dragged Ottoman Turkey into WWI. The second phase was implemented during the dictatorship of General Kemal Ataturk, and it involved the slow-motion genocide of the proud Kurdish nation (soon after 'the Republic of Turkey" was formed the Kurds officially became "mountain Turks" and began active revolts, 26 in all with the PKK rebellion as the most recent)
On April 24, 1915 behind the smokescreen of WWI, the Turkish government arrested over 200 Armenian community leaders and intellectuals in Constantinople and speedily deported them into the Turkish interior. This day marks the Day of Remembrance for the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide, eerily April 24th is also the Day of Remembrance for Shoah (the Jewish Genocide). In May of 1915 the Allied powers warned Turk leaders that they would be held accountable for "Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization", thus coining a new term in International law (see Vahakn Dadrian' s The History of the Armenian Genocide 1995) The Armenians were deported from the length and breadth of Ottoman Turkey promised that they would be resettled in "a safer place.” Agents of the Young Turk Party oversaw these death marches which led this sea of humanity, 1.5 million in all, into the ravines and valleys of Anatolia where they were ruthlessly butchered wholesale with blunt instruments by government organized Turkish death squads. The U.S. ambassador to Ottoman Turkey Henry Morgenthau said in his memoirs"when the deportation order was given it was clear that a death warrant was issued for the Armenian race" (Ambassador Morgenthau's Story 1918) After the war, coded telegrams ordering the genocide sent by Talat to Turkish provincial administrators were read in court and Talat was sentenced to death in absentia (Germany had granted him political asylum) Even more ironic is the fact that immediately after K.Ataturk solidified his rule in Turkey , the denial of the crime of genocide by Turkish officialdom began in order to create the boundaries of the new Turkish boundaries be they real or imaginary. In 1942, Nazi Germany exhumed Talat's remains in a state ceremony and shipped them back to Turkey. Today, there stands a grand mausoleum in Ankara memorializing Talat and a major thoroughfare named in his honor. Nazi leadership knew all too well the international impunity granted to the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. Adolf Hitler told his SS generals in 1939 before embarking on the Holocaust "Kill without Mercy .After all, who now remembers the annihilation of the Armenians"(Dadrian's Warrant for Genocide 1999)
It may be instructive at this point to refer to Ziya Gokalp, chief propagandist, and ideologue for the Young Turks and the intellectual influence for Talat and K. Ataturk. Uriel Heyd, Gokalp's British intellectual biographer, has noted, "He laid in his writings the foundation of the national and modern state which was eventually established by General Kemal Ataturk."(Heyd's Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gokalp 1950) Gokalp glorified a distant and mystical Turkish past when a GREY WOLF led the Turks out of the fogs of Central Asia. (the Grey Wolves are a racist paramilitary secret society that permeates all levels of Turkish society akin to the influence of the KKK in the U.S.A. during the 1920's) Ziya Gokalp also claimed for the Turks conquerors such as Attila and Genghis Khan as Turkish cultural heirs. Following this frame of reference "Greeks, Armenians who lived in Turkey would remain a foreign body in the national Turkish state"(Heyd)
Greeks in the Black Sea littoral of Asia Minor called PONTUS (meaning sea in Greek) were exposed to the worst treatment of Turkey's Genocidal Mentality. K. Ataturk had a thing for Greeks, he was born in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, and had been commandeer of Turkish military units defeated by Greek guerillas in Macedonia during the Balkan liberation from Ottoman Turk rule. Kemal hid in the shadows during Talat's reign in 1915-1918, however he proved himself a worthy ghazi (warrior and destroyer of Greeks) in the years following WWI. His close associates named him Bozkurt (Grey Wolf). K. Ataturk landed at Pontus in the Black Sea port of Samsun on May 19,1919-a day of mourning that is commemorated as the Pontic Greek Genocide every May 19th. Pontic Greeks have existed in their native region since the days of Jason and the Argonauts pre-dating the 3rd Century BC K.Ataturk and his Turkish armies systematically destroyed PONTUS. Some 700,000 Greeks were ousted from their ancestral homes by orders of General Kemal Ataturk and marched into oblivion-their bones litter the mountain pathways of the Pontus mountains. Greek owned properties were stolen by their Turk murderers and have laid the financial base for at least one contemporary Turkish family of economic power. After a systematic campaign of race extermination the Greeks were also destroyed in Smyrna (renamed Izmir in 1930) by Turkish armies under the command of K. Ataturk. Over a hundred thousand Greek civilians were massacred in September 1922 under the watchful eyes of a 27-ship armada from the U.S.A., Britain, Italy, and France. Smyrna was burned to the ground save for the Standard Oil compound. Admiral Bristol, the U.S. State Dept. man on the ground in Smyrna, had little regard for the lives of Greeks he had said "the Greeks are the worst race in this part of the world" (Marjorie Housepian Dobkin Smyrna 1922 1998) The international community through its silence has pardoned the perpetrator of this crime. The classical Pontic Greek city of Trapezounta has been renamed Trabzon and its cultural heritage is thoroughly destroyed. The Pontic Greek diaspora, which was sent to the four winds, has settled throughout the world and is entering its second and third generation. Pontic Greeks have begun now after generations of recovery to publish their memoirs-Sanho Halo, a survivor of the Pontic Greek Genocide, is beautifully memorialized by her daughter Thea in the current bestseller "Not Even My Name.” An old man in Queens, N.Y. where over 40,000 Pontic Greeks now reside told me once" The Turks stole our face, defaced our beautiful Pontic culture, their time will come and they will pay either in money or in blood.” The despair of poor tattered Pontic Greeks who settled as far from the PONTUS homeland as North America, Australia, and Northern Europe is being answered by their grandchildren who are reacting to the nightmares of their ancestors with calls to action.
The Armenian Genocide is now recognized by the UN, the Europarliament, and the French government. Despite persistent protests by the State Department, the U.S. Congress was set for a vote of the Armenian Genocide resolution on the House floor only to be shelved by Bill Clinton in the midnight hour through the personal plea of intervention by Israel's Shimon Peres. The perpetrator of the Jewish genocide has delivered over $60 billion in reparations to Israel, the peoples of the genocide in Asia Minor-Armenians, Assyrians, and the Greeks of Pontus-have gotten a kick in the ass. The genocide of the Assyrians (some 500,000 who were exterminated in waves that swept away the Armenian nation) is still unknown. Assyrians were also massacred when Turkey, in a precedent for the later invasion of Cyprus, invaded the province of Hatay Alexandetta in Syria during the 1930's. The slow-motion genocide of the Kurds is ongoing and steadily aided and covered-up by the U.S.A. and the descendants of another genocide, the Israelis. Cyprus endures a brutal Turkish military occupation to accommodate Anglo-American bases in northern Turkish occupied Cyprus. Greek demonstrators are slaughtered by Turkish Grey Wolf terrorist operatives. This same Grey Wolf organization is responsible for the "disappearances" and outright lynchings of Kurdish activists and intellectuals throughout Turkey. These same Grey Wolf terrorists are behind acts of arson that devastate the Greek islands every summer.
An International Industry of Denial is being financed by Turkey with the healthy support of Israel and the U.S. State Department. The services of top-notch K street lobbyists are enlisted including the million dollar arsenals of Phillip Morris Inc., a long list of arms merchants, and B'nai B'irth. So far, the Turkish Embassy supported by its front organization Institute of Turkish Studies (I.T.S.) has funded over 20 Turkish Studies programs in various American universities. The Chair of Turkish Studies in Princeton, Heath Lowry, resigned after being exposed as a ghostwriter for Turkish ambassador Nuzhet Kandemir. The letter he was busted ghost writing specified verbatim classic genocide denialist propaganda intended for distribution to a New York publisher. In Portland State University, the current holder of the Chair of Turkish Studies is an active mentor and former trainer for Ahmet Sozen. Sozen is an insider of Rauf Denktash's cryptic feudal regime in Turkish occupied northern Cyprus. A source in Cyprus, who I am not at liberty to disclose, tells me that Sozen is the intellectual arm of the Grey Wolves on the island of Cyprus. Sozen has penned several texts that the regime uses to cover-up for its crimes against the Greeks of Cyprus. Azmi Suslu fancies himself a protégé of Young Turk ideologue Ziya Gokalp and is considered the modern Joseph Goebbels of Turkey's fascistic society. Strangely, he made his premier in America in Portland, Oregon and spewed his propaganda to unknowing innocents in Portland State University thanks to the services of PSU's chair of Turkish Studies. PSU president Dan Bernstine along with other high ranking faculty took a very expensive trip to Turkey in 1999 to visit Turkish head of state Sulexman "the Butcher of Kurds" Demiral, while there Bernstine signed some sort of official agreement with Ataturk Research Center in the Prime Ministry's office. In a letter which I came across, Nuzhet Kandemir writes to his patron Bernstine "I have been closely following the ill-intending efforts of certain anti-Turkey ethnic lobbies."
The indigenous people of Asia Minor are experiencing a second killing.
Denial and erasure of memory is the final phase of genocide, as genocide
scholar Israel Charny has so eloquently expressed in his landmark book Is
the Holocaust Unique? (I.Charny 2000) Apo Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish
rebellion, has noted his unnerving anger as a young man when confronted with
the physical and spiritual ruins left behind from the previous victims of
Turkish criminality-Armenians,Assyrians, Pontic Greeks. The diaspora of
this collective genocide has come back to haunt the Turkish racists. The
State Security Council of Turkey recently issued a 14-page document
detailing the grassroots activism of the Assyrian nation in exile. Assyrian
hunger strikes in Sweden and the Netherlands, demonstrations outside Turkish
diplomatic posts spanning the globe, in June 2000 Assyrian protesters
occupied the Laussane Municipal Building in Switzerland to highlight
Turkey's Crimes Against Humanity. Internet activism, spearheaded by the
heroic grassroots American Hellenic Media Project AHMP and the Assyrian
International News Agency AINA, have drawn attention to the plight of Father
Yusuf Akbulut (an Assyrian priest imprisoned in Turkey for affirming the
historical reality of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocide) Thanks to
the campaign the courtroom was packed with international observers to
Turkey's embarrassment. AHMP volunteers successfully convinced Actor
Antonio Banderas to decline the film role of Ataturk in a $65 million film
hagiography of the late ethnic cleanser financed by B'nai B'irth.
Incidentally, B'nai B'irth is also the major Jewish lobby sandbagging the
Armenian Genocide resolution and is a major promoter of Ataturkism (the
Jewish organization paid for a full page ad in the N.Y. Times congratulating
the fascistic Turkish State on the occasion of its 75th anniversary)
Genocide is born of racism, bigotry, and absence of the fundamental
principles of human rights and civil liberties. The diaspora created by the
Genocidal Mentality of the Turks now begins to confront Turkey head-on to
face its past in order to save the present and to create a future of real
democratization. Democracy is not possible when the Turkish state denies
the oppression of Greeks in Cyprus, denies the slaughter of Kurds, denies
Turkey's genesis in genocide.
Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News Archives