Armenian Gospel Book from the Monastery of Gladjor, c. 1321
Today is the centenary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. This was a series of massacres carried out by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian people. The Armenians had risen up, like the other, majority Christians subject nations in the Balkans across the Black Sea to gain their freedom from the decaying Turkish empire. To counter this, the last Turkish sultan, Talat Pasha issued a firman ordering that the Armenians should be rounded up and slaughtered. 1.5 million Armenians, men, women and children were butchered.
The Pope caused controversy earlier this week when he marked the massacres, calling it the first genocide of the 20th century. I’m not sure if this is quite true, as I think about ten years or so previously the German colonial authorities in East Africa had also organised a genocide of the indigenous Herrero people. The occasion has a wider, European significance than just its attempt to exterminate the Armenians. Hitler noted the way the other European powers remained silent and did not act to stop it. This convinced him that they also wouldn’t act to save the Jews when the Nazi state began to persecute and murder them in turn. As he said ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’
Denial of Genocide by Turkish Authorities
Unfortunately, the genocide is still controversial. Robert Fisk in his article in Monday’s Independent discussed the Turkish government’s refusal to recognise the massacres as a genocide. Pope Francis’ comments sparked outrage amongst the Turkish authorities, and the Vatican’s ambassador to Turkey was summoned to meet the prime minister. Fisk himself recalled the abuse he had received from Turks outraged by his discussion of the genocide. He stated he began receiving mail about the issue when he personally dug the bones of some of the Armenians out of the sands of the Syrian desert in 1992. He stated that some of the letters were supportive. Most were, in his words, ‘little short of pernicious’.
In Turkey any discussion or depiction of the Armenian genocide as genocide was brutally suppressed. A few years ago, the Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, was killed for writing about them. Liberal Turks, who wish their nation face up to this dark episode of their history, have been imprisoned. The great Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, was sent to jail a few years ago. His writing on the genocide was judged to be ‘insulting to Turkish nationhood’, a criminal offence.
Fatih Arkin, Turkish Director, on Movie about Genocide
Dink’s assassination has, however, acted to promote a greater discussion and awareness of the genocide, and a large number of both Armenians and Turks are now pressing for the Turkish government to recognise it as such. Indeed, the Turkish-German film director, Fatih Arkin, made a film about the genocide, The Cut which premiered in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, in January.
In the interview below, Mr Arkin talks about he was moved to make the film following Dink’s assassination, and the number of Turks, who also join with the Armenians in demanding their government officially recognise the atrocity. Among those is the grandson of one of the leading perpetrators. What is interesting is that the film received a wide release in Turkey with no opposition or move to ban it.
Fisk on Turks Who Saved Armenians
This seems to show a new openness amongst the Turkish people as a whole about the genocide. And Fisk in his article notes that there many courageous and humane Turks, who refused to comply with Sultan’s orders, and saved Armenians. He stated in his article that these included at least one provincial governor, as well as lesser Turkish soldiers and policemen. Fisk felt that the Armenians should compile a list of these heroes, not least because it would make it harder for politicians like Erdogan, the country’s prime minister, not to sign a book of condolences, which included their names.
And these men were courageous: they risked their lives to save others from the carnage. There is absolutely no reason why they should not also be commemorated. In Judaism, I understand that righteous gentiles, who save Jews from persecution, are commemorated and believed to have a part in the olam ha-ba, the world to come. There is a section of the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, which displays the names of such righteous gentiles, who saved Jews during the Third Reich.
The Miracle at the Pool of Bethesda, from a Syriac Evangelistary
Massacre of Syriac Christians as Part of Wider Pattern of Massacres
The massacre of the Empire’s Christian minorities was not confined to the Armenians, although they are the best known victims. Other Christian peoples, including the Syriac-speaking churches in what is now Iraq and Syria, were also attacked and massacred, in what has become known as ‘the Day of the Sword’. The massacres also spread into Iran, where the Christian communities there also suffered massacres. They too deserve commemoration.
Peaceful Relations between Christians and Muslims Normal in Ottoman Empire
Historians of the Turkish Empire have pointed out that the Armenian genocide, and similar massacres committed by the Ottoman forces in the Balkans during the nationalist wars of the 19th century, were largely the exception. For most of the time Christian and Muslim lived peacefully side by side. Quite often Muslims and Christians shared the same cemeteries. And in one part of Bosnia, at least, the local Roman Catholic church stood bang right next to the local mosque. There were even a small group of worshippers, who seem not to have differentiated between Christianity and Islam.
There’s a story that one orthodox priest, while officiating mass at his church, noticed a group of people at the back wearing Muslim dress. He went and asked them why they were attending a Christian church, if they were Muslims. The people replied that they didn’t really make much difference between the two faiths. On Friday, they prayed at the mosque, and on Sunday they went to church.
Historical Bias and Nationalist Violence by Christians in 19th century Balkans
Historians of the Balkans have also pointed out the dangers of religious bias when discussing the various nationalist wars in the 19th century. In the 1870s the Ottoman Turks committed a series of atrocities suppressing a nationalist uprising in Bulgaria. This outraged public opinion in England, and provoked the Liberal prime minister, Gladstone, to demand that the Turks be ‘thrown out of Europe, bag and baggage’. Other British and American observers noted that atrocities were hardly one sided. Christians also committed them, but these were ignored by the West. One author of a book on the Balkans I read back in the 1990s argued that the various atrocities committed in this period were caused not so much by religious differences, but from nationalism, and so were no different from other atrocities committed by other countries across the world, and in western Europe today as part of ethnic and nationalist conflicts, such as Northern Ireland.
British Empire and Atrocities in Kenya
Other decaying empires have also committed horrific atrocities, and attempted to cover them up. It was only after a very long legal campaign, for example, that the British government admitted the existence and complicity in the regimes of mass murder, torture, mutilation and internment in Kenya to suppress the Mao Mao rebellion. See the book, Africa’s Secret Gulags, for a complete history of this.
ISIS and the Massacre of Christians
The commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians, and by extension the other Christian subject peoples of the Ottoman and Persian Empires at the time, has become pressing relevant because the persecution today of Christians in the region by the resurgent Islamist movements, like ISIS, and Boko Haram in Nigeria. Yet these groups differ in their attitude to the massacre of non-Muslim civilians from that of the Turkish government. The official Turkish attitude has been silence and an attempt to suppress or rebut the genocide’s existence. This points to an attitude of shame towards them. ISIS, which last Monday murdered 30 Ethiopian Coptic Christians, shows absolutely no shame whatsoever. Far from it: they actually boast about their murder and enslavement of innocent civilians.
Conversion of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians by Force, and Murder of Civilians Contrary to Muslim Law
I was taught at College that their actions contravene sharia law. Islamic law also has a set of regulations for the conduct of warfare, which rule out the conversion of the ‘Peoples of the Book’ – Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians – by force. Nor may women, children and non-combatants be harmed. And this has been invoked by the ulema in the past to protect Christian and other minorities in the Ottoman Empire. In the 17th century one of the Turkish sultans decided he was going to use military force to make the Christians in the Balkans convert to Islam. He sought approval for his course of action from the majlis, the governing assembly of leading Muslim clerics, who issued legal opinions on questions of Muslim law and practice. They refused, on the grounds that it was un-Islamic. The sultan backed down, and his planned campaigns against his Christian subjects were abandoned.
ISIS Also Butcher Muslims and Yezidis
Nor do ISIS, and similar Islamist movements limit themselves to attacking Christians. We’ve also seen them butcher and enslave the Yezidis, as well as other Muslims, simply for being the ‘wrong’ type of Muslim. For ISIS, they, and only they, represent true Islam. The rest are part of the ‘juhailiyya’, the world of darkness and ignorance, who must be fought and conquered.
Need to Commemorate All Victims of Atrocities
The Armenian genocide and its victims should rightly be remembered, as should so many other holocausts since then. Not only is this owed to the victims and history itself, but also to stop similar massacres occurring. And we need to remember that the capacity for such evil is not confined to particular nations, but can be found throughout history and humanity.
Tags: 'Africa's Secret Gulags', 'Black Sea', 'Day of the Sword', 'Peoples of the Book', 'The Cut', 'The Independent', Armenian Genocide, Armenians, Balkans, Bosnia, British Empire, Cemeteries, Christians, Churches, Coptic Church, Erdogan, Ethiopians, Evangelistary, Fatih Arkin, Gladjor, Gladstone, Gospel Book, Herrero, hitler, Holocaust, Holocaust Memorial, Hrant Dink, ISIS, Jews, Juhailiyya, Majlis, Mao Mao, Monastery, Mosques, Muslims, Nicholas Fisk, Northern Ireland, Olam ha-Ba, Orhan Pamuk, Orthodox Church, Ottoman Empire, Persian Empire, Pope Francis, Sharia, Syriac Christians, Talat Pasha, Ulema, Vatican, Yad Vashem, Yerevan, Yezidis, Zoroastrians
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
April 24, 2015 at 12:30 pm |
“Other British and American observers noted that atrocities were hardly one sided. Christians also committed them, but these were ignored by the West. One author of a book on the Balkans I read back in the 1990s argued that the various atrocities committed in this period were caused not so much by religious differences, but from nationalism, and so were no different from other atrocities committed by other countries across the world, and in western Europe today as part of ethnic and nationalist conflicts, such as Northern Ireland.”
The great irony is that nationalism was introduced very deliberately into the Ottoman region by Western Europeans through the 19th century.
The Turkish Turanianists were modern racialists imbued with 19th century ideas of nationalism (not unlike the BNP), yet the Ottoman Empire, (which had in its centuries of existence nearly always been a successful example of a multiracial, multi-religious society) today always get the blame.
When today’s geopolitical requirements meet history – truth is the first casualty.
If we are going to commemorate genocides in that region the genocides of Jews, Albanians, Muslims and others in revolutionary Greece should not be forgotten, or the various other local genocides caused by the European import of nationalism. This won’t happen, of course, largely because the victims were generally not Christians murdered by people who the world identified as Muslims.
April 24, 2015 at 1:51 pm |
Not only did the Turks massacre the Armenians.
Turks massacred men and women and children, who had every right to live in the Greek enclave nation of Smyrna in 1922.
Nobody helped the Greeks to survive.
Nationalism is the norm throughout the world for all cultures on earth. It is the basic core of human culture.
The Greeks did not do genocide, but fought a war against the occupation of the Ottoman Empire.
An Ottoman Empire that the British fought on the side of, in various wars.
Greeks are not an inferior people who need western Europeans to tell them what is or is not nationalism.
The whole of modern day Turkey was Greece in ancient times.
The Greeks were driven out of their homeland by the Turks, who actually come from central Asia.
Today, the latest people suffering genocide by the Turks and others within the Moslem world, are fellow Moslems, the Kurds, forbidden by the West and by Turkey in forming their own nation, from ancient times, of Kurdistan.
Kurdistan is cut up in amongst many other Moslem nations in the region, not only Turkey.
Nationalism does not cause genocide. Genocide happens even inside cultures as seen by Pol Pot in Cambodia of his own people.
But genocide is also leaving the poor of all ages to starve, as is happening in the UK from the Tories, Labour and Lib Dem parties.
Genocide is also starvation by design.
April 24, 2015 at 5:02 pm |
“Everywhere, as though at a preconcerted signal, the peasantry rose, and massacred all the Turks—
men, women and children—on whom they could lay hands. In the Morea shall no Turk be left. Nor in the whole wide world.
Thus rang the song which, from mouth to mouth, announced the beginning of a war of extermination…
Within three weeks of the outbreak of the revolt, not a Muslim was left, save those who had succeeded in escaping into the towns
W. Alison Phillips, The History of the Greek revolution, 1897.
April 24, 2015 at 5:07 pm |
William St. Clair, upwards of twenty thousand Turkish men, women and children were killed by their Greek neighbors in a few weeks of slaughter.[5] William St. Clair also argued that:
“with the beginning of the revolt, the bishops and priests exhorted their parishioners to exterminate infidel Muslims.”
“The Turks of Greece …. disappeared suddenly and finally in the spring of 1821
unmourned and unnoticed by the rest of the world….
It was hard to believe then that Greece once contained a large population of Turkish descent, living in small communities all over the country, prosperous farmers, merchants, and officials, whose families had known no other home for hundreds of years…
They were killed deliberately, without qualm or scruple, and there was no regrets either then or later.”
William St. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free – The Philhellenes in the War of Independence.
All of these people were killed because of nationalists who turned one race against another, the case was no different with the Armenians.