The Chancellor of Germany, Angela
Merkel once said that she had difficulty in understanding why Turks deny the ‘Armenian
Genocide’, and why they were so furious about the Bundestag’s Resolution --which
later had to be clarified by the government that it was not legally binding-.
We all can have this kind of
difficulties. For instance, there was one thing in particular about the
Armenian genocide allegations, I had been having difficulty in grasping. How
could the allegations cover the years of the Turkish War of Independence
(1919-1922), which was a matter of do-or-die
for Turks, who could not concede the terms of the Armistice of Mudros signed between
the Allied Powers and the Ottoman Empire (October 30, 1918), which was a death
warrant in practice?
But of course, on the other side
of the coin, there was the case of the Armenians, who have thought that the
defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI was not only the end of the Ottoman Empire,
but also the end of the Turkish sovereignty, and had come back with the dream
of founding the Great Armenia in Eastern Anatolia and Cilicia, with French and
English army uniforms on them as invaders. Who cared that the population ratio
was one to six before the war. More than half the Muslim population had fled
home and 40 per cent of those who had fled home had lost their lives. The rest
could have died as well. Almost all adult men were gone to war, got killed, or
wounded or captivated, few would be able to return; many of those who had to
remain at home had died because of famine or diseases, or raids of Tashnak
chetes who massacred more than 500 hundred thousand souls, including children
and women. So the war-torn, mostly evacuated region could be populated by
Armenians from all over the World.
At the end of the War of
Independence, as Turkish people, we were reborn from our ashes. Memoirs of an
Ottoman officer, Mehmet Sinan Bey of Bolvadin (Afyon), I have recently read,
tells about those long war years and it was helpful to me to find an answer.
22 years old Mehmet, who was a teacher,
left teaching and joined the army when the WWI broke out. Mehmet is a very
common name among Turks and there were a number of Mehmets in the troop. Therefore
his commander called him Sinan to distinguish from the other Mehmets, so he
became artillery officer Mehmet Sinan Bey. With the order of June 25, 1915, he first
joined the Gallipoli campaign with his unit, and when the campaign was over
with the withdrawal of the Allied, he found himself in Kut, Mesopotamia (modern-day
Iraq).
Kut-al-Amara was where “in the
single largest surrender of troops in British history to that time, some 13,000
soldiers under the command of Sir Charles Townshend give in on April 29, 1916,
after withstanding nearly five months under siege by Turkish and German forces
at the town of Kut-al-Amara, on the Tigris River in the Basra province of
Mesopotamia” (History Today). However, later the course of the battle changed and Sinan Bey
became a prisoner of war (POW). The hardships of captivity ended when he managed to escape from
the hospital he was taken to, and went to Van via Iran, where he was directed
to the Caucasian Front. When the war with Armenia was over with the signing
of the Treaty of Alexandropol, 2/3 December 1920, he was able to return home,
but not for long since the War of Independence had already started under the leadership
of Mustafa Kemal. Sinan Bey takes us to three fronts of WWI, but sometimes he
also makes comments concerning some of the other fronts which also comprise The
Sinai and Palestine, Yemen, and Galicia. During the War of Independence, Sinan
Bey fought on the Western Front and he was in the unit which followed the
retreating Greek army to İzmir after the Dumlupınar Victory on August 30, 1922,
which ended the occupation of the country and thus independence was gained
after long years of wars and 5.5 million losses from 1912-1922.
When Sinan Bey became a POW, the
British officers in charge used to write news items on a blackboard or
sometimes bulletins were distributed at the prisoner camp. The news of
occupation of Istanbul and Izmir caused deep grief in the winter of 1919 among
the Turkish officers who were stuck in this completely isolated and well
guarded camp in Basra. War propaganda was in full swing with news written about
Mustafa Kemal and Turkish revolutionaries using a confusing language to demoralize and pacify the
prisoners. Mustafa Kemal had revolted
against the Sultan, he was expelled from the army and condemned to death in
absentia. Mustafa Kemal’s men had
plundered Marash and killed innocent people! The Greek army was advancing
towards Bursa and Alashehir in regular units to suppress anarchy and
insurgency, In these news items Mustafa Kemal was mentioned as a brigand chief!
In the English version of Wikipedia’s Turkish War of
Independence article it is stated that 264,000 Greek, and 60,000-250,000 Armenian civilians were killed.
In the Turkish version there is no such statement. Turkish people know from
their families, --mind you, this has nothing to do with the official history,
it is peoples’ own experience—both Greeks and Armenians have been atrocious
during the occupation period, have exerted scorched earth policy very viciously
as they retreated. It is interesting that no Turkish civilian losses are
mentioned.
Sertçelik mentions that Soviet historians have covered the
massacres perpetrated by the Armenian
chetes towards Muslims. Soviet historian M. Pavlovich was one of them. He has
stated that “Armenian chetes acting
within the French army embarked into killing the Muslim population in the
region, particularly in an atrocious manner in Cilicia. … The organized
banditry of Tashnak chetes had triggered a strong awakening among the Muslims
(Sertçelik, 2015, p.394). In the book titled Dvižuščie
Sily kemalistskoj revoljucii,
another Soviet historian Irandust
has described the situation as follows: “Terrorist
regime was applied in the occupied territories. France turned Tashnaks into
gendarmerie unions and they exerted mass killings on Turkish people. … Tashnak chetes started killing all people,
village by village in turns. Upon this Turks revolted. Following 17 days of
very bloody street fightings, the French and Tashnak units were obliged to
retreat. The program for the annihilation of the Turkish population physically
was being carried out deliberately (Sertçelik, 2015, p.395)
After signing of the Armistice of Mudros, Marash
was first controlled by the British troops between 22 February 1919 and 30
October 1919, then by the French, and
finally was taken over by the Turkish National Movement after the Battle
of Marash on 13 February 1920. Western and Armenian sources assert that a
massacre of Armenian civilians took place afterwards. In Wikipedia it is stated
that “early reports put the number of Armenians dead at no less than 16,000,
although this was later revised down to 5,000–12,000 (Kahramanmaraş, n.d.).
Armenians’ propaganda activities, supported by the
missionaries had drawn attention to Cilicia and many journalists have come to
the country. The fact that there was no massacres, but just fighting causing
losses on both sides, was told them by Admiral Bristol. Admiral Bristol’s War
Diary (Papers of Mark L. Bristol) is
available at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. His diary entry about the meeting with the
journalists is dated March 22, 1920 (Öksüz and Köse, 2015, 167).
“By early 1921, Britain’s leading
diplomat in Istanbul concluded that it was useless to regard Mustapha Kemal any
longer as a brigand chief. Angora government has a tight grip on the whole Asia
Minor. (Rotberg, 2012, p.127).
At the House of Commons, Lord Curzon would say “you are
mistaken to think the Armenians are innocent as a 8 year old girl. However,
their latest actions have proven how savage they can be” (Görgülü, 2002, p. 30)
on those days.
Atatürk’s approach to these tragic events can be found in the Speech which has been translated into English (1927, pp. 327-328):
The assertions regarding the Armenian massacres were undoubtedly not in
accordance with the fact. For, the Armenians in the south, armed by foreign
troops and encouraged by the protection they enjoyed, molested the Mohamedans
of their district. Animated with the spirit of revenge, they pursued a
relentless policy of murder and extinction everywhere. This was responsible for
the tragic incident at Marash. Making common cause with the foreign troops, the
Armenians had completely destroyed an old Mohamedan town like Marash by their
artillery and machine-gun fire. They killed thousands of innocent and
defenceless women and children. The Armenians were the instigators of the
atrocities, which were unique in history. The Mohamedans had merely offered
resistance and had defended themselves with the object of saving their lives
and their honour. The telegram which the Americans, who had remained in the
town with the Mohamedans during the five days that the massacres continued, had
sent to their representative in Constantinople, clearly indicates in an
indisputable manner who were the originators of this tragedy. Threatened by the
bayonets of the Armenians, who were armed to the teeth, the Mohamedans in the
Vilayet of Adana were at that time in danger of being annihilated. While this
policy of oppression and annihilation carried on against the Mohamedans, who
were only trying to save their existence and their independence, was liable to
attract the attention of the civilised world and excite their commiseration,
how could the denials or the proposal made to us to abandon the attitude
attributed to us be taken seriously? Was not the position in the districts of
Smyrna and Aidin similar or, perhaps, more tragic?
Isn’t it interesting that despite
all these documentations, allegations that there has been a genocide continue. Yesterday’s
war propaganda “myth” have become historical narrative today! Furthermore
encouraged by the acceptance Armenian alleges have been receiving, Greeks have also started making similar
assertions unbelievably.
 |
| Bombed by PKK |
What is more interesting is that
the method of instigating unease, causing events and then blaming the other
side for the results of it, is still used today. For instance the Western World
believes that PKK fights for the Kurds and Turkish army is being unfair to
them. An example of this is the Uludere event
(28.12.2011), known as Roboski Massacre, where 34 civil smugglers were killed based
on wrong information provided that they were terrorists, unintentionally, and
then was blamed by killing innocent civilians. The Western World does not query
why PKK had dug ditches and piled up arms and armoury in the years of “Kurdish
Initiative (Açılım)” but wants Turkey to come to terms with terrorists who have lost
Kurdish peoples’ support. The burnt public library, bombed schools were probably not mentioned. The photographs published in Turkish daily papers may not
have appeared in the Western counterparts either.
When one of the US President
candidates declared that they would found Kurdistan, I asked does the US want
Kurdistan for herself or for the Kurds? I can’t imagine that a Kurdish person
would like to need a passport to go to Istanbul. In fact, recently Demirtaş, Co-chairman
of HDP, has said that Istanbul is the biggest Kurdish city. The Western World
should understand how closely Kurds and Turks have intermingled and leave us
alone. The two peoples have no enmity between themselves.
References
Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal. (1929). Speech
delivered by Ghazi Mustapha Kemal: President of the Turkish Republic, October 1927. Leipzig: K.F. Koehler. Accessed
on 11.09.2016 at http://www.anamnesis.info/node/628
; A Speech delivered by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1927. İstanbul: Ministry of
Education, 1963.
Görgülü, İsmet. (2002).
Atatürk’ten Ermeni konusu. 2nd. Enl. Ed. Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi.
History Today, 29 April : World
War I, 1916: British forces surrender at Kut, Mesopotamia. Accessed at http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-forces-surrender-at-kut-mesopotamia
on 30.08.2016.
Kahramanmaraş. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahramanmara%C5%9F
Kinder, Lucy. (20.11.2013). “Do we live in the Matrix? Scientists believe
they may have answered the question”. The Telegraph. Accessed on 15.09.2016 at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10451983/Do-we-live-in-the-Matrix-Scientists-believe-they-may-have-answered-the-question.html
Öksüz, Hikmet and Köse, İsmail. (2015). ABD Yüksek Komiseri
Amiral Bristol’un Rapor ve Savaş Günlüklerinde Ermeni Meselesi. Karadeniz
Teknik Üniversitesi Yayınları.
Özgen, Mehmet Sinan. (2011).
Bolvadinli Mehmet Sinan Bey’in Harp Hatıraları. Yay. Haz. Servet Avşar, Hasan
Babacan, Muharrem Bayar. İstanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları.
Rotberg, Robert I. (2012).
Transformative political leadership: Making a difference in the developing
World. University of Chicago Press.
Türk Kurtuluş Savaşı. Vikipedi. Accessed on 13.09.2016 at https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrk_Kurtulu%C5%9F_Sava%C5%9F%C4%B1
Armenian Holocaust:My Story blog by Selma Aslan is
licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Gayriticari-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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