From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Subject: It is sickening to think that the Armenians are capable of such...
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world
Lines: 329

In article <1993Apr9.140123.12253@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> halsall@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU (Paul Halsall) writes:

>	It's curious that Serdar spend his time attacking Greeks and
>Armenians. Who just happen to be historical opponents of Turkey. The

Because, the x-Soviet Armenian government got away with the genocide 
of 2.5 million Turkish men, women and children and is enjoying the 
fruits of that genocide. And they are doing 'it' again. Are you so 
blind?

>problem is, everybody - Arab, Greek, Bulgar, Serb, Russian, Tartar, 
>Circassian, Persian, Kurd - is, or has been an opponent. Who has been

Kurds 'R' us; Armenians 'R' not.

>an ally? This historic circumstance seems to have taken a certain
>toll on Serdar: perhaps he should be posting to alt.raving.nationalist
>rather than soc.history?

Excuse me?

 "We closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as 
  ways of escape for the Tartars and then proceeded in the work 
  of extermination. Our troops surrounded village after village. 
  Little resistance was offered. Our artillery knocked the huts 
  into heaps of stone and dust and when the villages became untenable 
  and inhabitants fled from them into fields, bullets and bayonets 
  completed the work. Some of the Tartars escaped of course. They 
  found refuge in the mountains or succeeded in crossing the border 
  into Turkey. The rest were killed. And so it is that the whole 
  length of the borderland of Russian Armenia from Nakhitchevan to 
  Akhalkalaki from the hot plains of Ararat to the cold mountain 
  plateau of the North were dotted with mute mournful ruins of 
  Tartar villages. They are quiet now, those villages, except for 
  howling of wolves and jackals that visit them to paw over the 
  scattered bones of the dead." 

                             Ohanus Appressian
                            "Men Are Like That"
                                   p. 202.


A genocide is a deliberate and organized massacre of people in an 
attempt to exterminate a race. This is the worst crime in history. 
It happened to the Turks in eastern Anatolia and the Armenian 
dictatorship. 2.5 million Turks and Kurds were killed in the worst 
ways imaginable. It is sickening to think that the human race is capable 
of such actions, but there is no denying the fact that the Armenian 
genocide of 2.5 million Muslims happened.

People of Turkiye deeply sympathize with those whose relatives were 
killed in the Turkish genocide. I understand their anger that there 
are those who still deny that the Turkish genocide indeed took place, 
despite the fact that the genocide of 2.5 million Turks has been 
well documented over the past six decades. We cannot reverse
the events of the past, but we can and we must strive to keep the
memory of this tragedy alive on this side of the Atlantic, so as
to help prevent a recurrence of the extermination of a people
because of their religion or their race. 

Source: Bristol Papers, General Correspondence: Container #32 - Bristol
        to Bradley Letter of September 14, 1920.

"I have it from absolute first-hand information that the Armenians in 
 the Caucasus attacked Tartar (Turkish) villages that are utterly 
 defenseless and bombarded these villages with artillery and they murder
 the inhabitants, pillage the village and often burn the village."

>	Lets get somethings straight.

Why not?

>1.	Armenians are no angels, but they were subject to Turkish genocide.

And the Germans were subject to Jewish Genocide? Are you for real? 
Tell me 'Halsall', were you high on "ASALA/SDPA/ARF" forgeries and
fabrications when you wrote that? Where is your non-existent list
of scholars. Here is mine: During the First World War and the ensuing 
years - 1914-1920, the Armenian Dictatorship through a premeditated 
and systematic genocide, tried to complete its centuries-old policy 
of annihilation against the Turks and Kurds by savagely murdering 
2.5 million Muslims and deporting the rest from their 1,000 year 
homeland.

The attempt at genocide is justly regarded as the first instance
of Genocide in the 20th Century acted upon an entire people.
This event is incontrovertibly proven by historians, government
and international political leaders, such as U.S. Ambassador Mark 
Bristol, William Langer, Ambassador Layard, James Barton, Stanford 
Shaw, Arthur Chester, John Dewey, Robert Dunn, Papazian, Nalbandian, 
Ohanus Appressian, Jorge Blanco Villalta, General Nikolayef, General 
Bolkovitinof, General Prjevalski, General Odiselidze, Meguerditche, 
Kazimir, Motayef, Twerdokhlebof, General Hamelin, Rawlinson, Avetis
Aharonian, Dr. Stephan Eshnanie, Varandian, General Bronsart, Arfa,
Dr. Hamlin, Boghos Nubar, Sarkis Atamian, Katchaznouni, Rachel 
Bortnick, Halide Edip, McCarthy, W. B. Allen, Paul Muratoff and many 
others.

J. C. Hurewitz, Professor of Government Emeritus, Former Director of
the Middle East Institute (1971-1984), Columbia University.

Bernard Lewis, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern History,
Princeton University.

Halil Inalcik, University Professor of Ottoman History & Member of
the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, University of Chicago.

Peter Golden, Professor of History, Rutgers University, Newark.

Stanford Shaw, Professor of History, University of California at
Los Angeles.

Thomas Naff, Professor of History & Director, Middle East Research
Institute, University of Pennsylvania.

Ronald Jennings, Associate Professor of History & Asian Studies,
University of Illinois.

Howard Reed, Professor of History, University of Connecticut.

Dankwart Rustow, Distinguished University Professor of Political
Science, City University Graduate School, New York.

John Woods, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History, 
University of Chicago.

John Masson Smith, Jr., Professor of History, University of
California at Berkeley.

Alan Fisher, Professor of History, Michigan State University.

Avigdor Levy, Professor of History, Brandeis University.

Andreas G. E. Bodrogligetti, Professor of History, University of California
at Los Angeles.

Kathleen Burrill, Associate Professor of Turkish Studies, Columbia University.

Roderic Davison, Professor of History, George Washington University.

Walter Denny, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts.

Caesar Farah, Professor of History, University of Minnesota.

Tom Goodrich, Professor of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Tibor Halasi-Kun, Professor Emeritus of Turkish Studies, Columbia University.

Justin McCarthy, Professor of History, University of Louisville.

Jon Mandaville, Professor of History, Portland State University (Oregon).

Robert Olson, Professor of History, University of Kentucky.

Madeline Zilfi, Professor of History, University of Maryland.

James Stewart-Robinson, Professor of Turkish Studies, University of Michigan.

.......so the list goes on and on and on.....

Now wait, there is more.

  Mark Alan Epstein, 'The Ottoman Jewish Communities and their Role
  in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,' Klaus Schwarz Werlag,
  Freiburg (1980).

  page 19:

 <<During the fifteenth century, when the Ottomans were struggling to
  reestablish themselves in the Balkans, there was considerable turmoil
  among the Jewish communities in Central and Western Europe. Even if
  the difficulties of the darker centuries immediately preceding the
  fourteenth are minimized, it is easy to understand the attraction which
  Ottoman life, particularly when compared to life in Europe, held for the
  Jews. There is no way to tell how many Jews left Christendom for the
  realm of the rising Muslim Ottomans, but with each account of persecution
  in or expulsion from Christian countries it is recorded that some Jews
  fled to Ottoman territory. The regularity of these reports suggests that
  the Ottomans were considered reasonably tolerant protectors and that
  there was a regular trickle of Jewish families moving southward and
  eastward from Western and Central Europe. (...) It is evident that the
  effects of plague, late crusades, and the general intolerance and
  persecution of Jews in Christian Europe resulted in the redirection
  of the whole focus of Jewish life which, for more than two centuries,
  was to be oriented toward Muslim East.>>


  page 21:

  <<In the second quarter of the fifteenth century the foremost official
  in the  Edirne Jewish community was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati the Ashkenazi
  Chief Rabbi of the city. He was the most important rabbi in the city and
  the author of an important letter which tells us something of the situation
  of the Edirne Jewry in the fifteenth century. Sarfati himself was from
  Christian Europe and supposedly wrote this letter at the behest of two
  recent arrivals from there, who, upon seeing the prosperity and freedom
  of the Ottoman Jews, prevailed upon him to write their European
  coreligionists apprising them of the situation and urging them to migrate.
  This remarkable letter advised its recipients not only of the pleasant
  conditions in the Ottoman domains, but described as well the ease of
  travel to Palestine and the holy places, an attraction to those who
  would make a pilgrimage or choose to be buried there.>> (*)


  page 41:

 <<...the impression gained from the Hebrew sources is that the Jews were
 firmly aware of the community of interests which existed between them
 and the Ottomans, especially in comparison to relations with the Christians
 of Europe.

 Confirmation of the commonality of interests between Muslims and Jews is
 also indicated by the fact that European Christians perceived the Jews
 as allies of Islam and were well aware of Muslim-Jewish cooperation.
 Certainly the activity of important Jewish financiers and politicians
 representing the Ottoman government abroad did not pass unnoticed. European
 sources are the basis for much of our knowledge of their careers. In addition
 it appears that Christian pirates plundered ''Turks and Jews,''  their
 sworn enemies, and that Europeans considered the Jews to be agents who
 regularly reported to the Ottomans.

 There are well-known examples of overt Jewish support for the Ottomans
 in the struggle against European powers. The two best known instances
 of Jewish support for the campaigning Ottomans are the frequently cited
 instances of the Jewish contributions to the conquests of Buda, in the
 early sixteenth century, and of Rhodes. We also have reports of sympathy
 for the Ottomans during the siege of Chios. An unpublished Ottoman
 document shows dramatically the mutual interests which existed in some
 Greek towns...>>

 page 43:

  <<It is clear that throughout the sixteenth century it was a generally
 accepted fact that the interests of Jews and Muslims coincided frequently,
 and all parties involved, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, were aware of
 the situation.>>


 page 46:

 <<...it seems that the relations between Greeks and Jews were not
 particularly cordial. The two groups had little in common, few common
 interests, and perceived no common philosophical or religious tradition
 which could serve as the basis for cooperation, rather than enmity. If
 there was any identifiable bond of good will which existed between
 religious communities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was
 that between Muslims and Jews, neither of whom had much in common with
 the Orthodox.>>

 page 46:

 <<The general impression of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman context
 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is one of community of
 interests. From the earliest times the Ottomans seem to have welcomed
 Jews to their territory and to have found in the communities already
 existing in places which they conquered a cooperative element. The Jewish
 response to this tolerance was a steady flow of Jews from Christian
 countries to Ottoman domains.>>

 page 151:

  <<From the period before 1453 we have only a few indications that the
  Ottoman-Jewish relationship was well on the course of amity which would
  characterize it for years afterward, but the liberality of the Ottomans,
  in contrast to the intolerance of the Byzantines, and the protection and
  the security which the Ottomans offered, in comparison to conditions
  elsewhere, leave little doupt that even then both the Ottomans and the
  Jews recognized their mutual interests...>>

  page 161:

  <<It is impossible to say how fundamental the Jews were in the success
  of the Ottomans in rebuilding Istanbul or in Ottoman mercantile success
  in the sixteenth century. That they played an important role in both
  cannot be doupted. It is also unclear whether they were important enough
  to say that the Ottomans would not have experienced their great success
  without the Jews and that no other group could have been found to serve
  the Ottomans as well as did the Jews. It is, however, unmistakably clear
  that there are few parallels in world history to this remarkable
  partnership between Jews and the non-Jewish society in which they lived.
  We must conclude that the Ottomans could probably not achieved their
  success without a group performing certain tasks for them as well as the
  Jews did. Certainly for the Jews of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
  the Ottoman Empire was a most remarkable and salubrious home.>>


(*) A version of Rabbi Sarfati's [Tzarfati] letter is given by Prof.Shaw:

  page 32:

  <<Your cries and sobs reached us. We have been told of all the troubles
  and persecutions which you have to suffer in the German lands....I hear
  the lamentation of my brethren...The barbarous and cruel nation ruthlessly
  oppresses the faithful children of the chosen people...The priests and
  prelates of Rome have risen. They wish to root out the memory of Jacob
  and erase the name of Israel. They always devise new persecutions. They
  wish to bring you to the stake...Listen my brethren, to the counsel I will
  give you. I too was born in Germany and studied Torah with the German
  rabbis. I was driven out of my native country and came to the Turkish land,
  which is blessed by God and filled with all good things. Here I found rest
  and happiness; Turkey can also become for you the land of peace...If you
  who live in Germany knew even a tenth of what God has blessed us with
  in this land, you would not consider any difficulties; you would set out
  to come to us...Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain
  of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver in our hands. We are
  not oppressed with heavy taxes, and our commerce is free and unhindered.
  Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap, and every one of us
  lives in peace and freedom. Here the Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow
  hat as a badge of shame, as is the case in Germany, where even wealth and
  great fortune are a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy
  among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him
  to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect
  your forces, and come to us. Here you will be free of your enemies, here
  you will find rest...>>[13]

[13] Israel Zinberg, A History Of Jewish Literature. vol.V. The Jewish
     Center of Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Hebrew Union College Press,
     Ktav Publishers, New York, 1974).

Serdar Argic

                           'We closed the roads and mountain passes that 
                            might serve as ways of escape for the Turks 
                            and then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                  (Ohanus Appressian - 1919)
                           'In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists 
                            a single Turkish soul.' (Sahak Melkonian - 1920)


