100 YEARS AGO; Armenia 1915's Genocide By Turkey

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

Turkey after WWI on October 8, 1920

There is never an excuse for causing the genocide of a people. This means an extermination of a race.   A country may give their reason, but it only shows that they did not have the humane capacity to think of a good solution to an easy problem .  Turkey is still in denial. they had tried to exterminate all the Armenians living in Turkey.   There were foreign  people living in the Ottoman Empire.  It covered much of the world.  Jews were in Palestine and Christians of Armenia were actually then living in Turkey.  The Turks are Muslims. 1.2 million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1918 in an ethnic cleansing.

                                         HERE ARE EVENTS LEADING UP TO THEIR DEATHS
                     JEWS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT BUT WERE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

The Turks occupied the Greek city of Salonica in 1430.  Salonica, and after 1492 when Jews were seeking new lands in lieu of having to convert to Catholicism and immigrating to Constantinople (Turkey)  were centers for Jews.  The Greeks took back Salonica in 1912, just before WWI.  With 80,000 Jews, it was mainly a Jewish city.

Turkey was represented by the Ottoman Empire.  Jews were in Salonica when it was taken by the Empire in 1430.   They were in Constantinople (Istanbul) when it was taken in 1453.  After 1492 when Spain made its ultimatum that Jews were either to convert or leave the country quickly,  the Sultans opened the gates of the Ottoman Empire generously to the refugees from Spain, and later from Portugal and other places. and the Turkish Jewish community, mainly of Sephardi Jews, were very important community members.  They were favored as a trading and artisan asset.  They acted as the counterpoise to the possible disloyal Christian minorities.

Palestine became part of the Empire in 1517.  So was Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and others.  Jews had the normal Muslim code held on them, but not always strictly.  Jews such as Joseph Nasi and Solomon Ashkenazi were able to use their influence in the state.
                                                                     

Ottoman Empire

Then things changed and became harsher for the Jews.
The Ottoman Empire became the 3rd largest Jewish community  after Russia and Astro-Hungary Empires with a. 350,000 population by 1900.  From there on the Ottoman Empire faced gradual disintregration and Jews slowly came under other authorities, which was worse.

With the 1st Balkan War and WWI, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed. They went through all their money as well.
                                                                       

Turkey had the Armenian War from 1915 to 1923.  The Ottoman Empire had rounded up and arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders living in Constantinople on April 24, 1915, the middle of WWI.  The Empire had sided with Germany in the war and were a part of the Axis.
                                                                         

They also then took many men for forced laborers through army conscripts.  Then they deported the women, children, elderly and infirm and had them in death marches leading to the Syrian desert.  They were driven forward by military escorts and were deprived of food and water.  Along the way they were robbed, raped and then massacred.

Other groups such as Christians, Assyrians and the Ottoman Greeks were also targeted for extermination by the government of the Ottoman Empire.  Their treatment was part of the same genocidal policy.  Armenians were suffering from being wiped out in many communities.

The total number of people killed was between 800,000 to 1.5 million.  This was picking on non-Muslims. The Armenians' deaths were done in  an organized manner, meant to eliminate them all.   23 countries have officially recognized the mass killings as a genocide, but Turkey refuses to accept this.  It seems to have showed us early on what man is capable of doing to another different group, a prelude to the Nazi actions.

                                     England's Mandate in Palestine started after WWI in 1920.

Jews in Palestine were siding and fighting with England in WWI when under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, but being in Palestine were in the clear as far as coming under pogroms from the Ottoman Empire.  The Jewish Palestinian population in 1915 was 83,000.  In 1896 the Jerusalem Jewish population was 28,112, and by 1922, after WWI, it was 33,971.
                                                                   

Armenia

For 3,000 years, Armenians had lived there in what is known as Anatolia which is the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa.  They were ruled by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Mongols.  Mount Ararat was part of their kingdom that came into being in 600 BCE, later than the Israelite Kingdom.  Their choice of being the first Christian kingdom probably caused this rift with the Ottoman Empire, though they had accepted Jews.
                                                                     

Abdul Hamid II, Sultan of Ottoman Empire 1876-1909

Fighting started between 1894 and 1896, just when Jews were still coming to Palestine.  The Sultan was ordering pogroms against the Armenians.  They slaughtered 100,000.  By 1908, the younger Turks got the older ones to stop such practice and become more in tune with the times.  It didn't last long.  There was a coup in 1913 and the War started in 1914 with a new batch of Turks that were power-hungry. 1915  to 1918 saw 1.2 million Armenians killed by Turks.

This genocide was an example to Hitler who copied it and used the taking of Poland as a need for space.  Seeing no one bothered when the Ottoman Empire killed off all the Armenians, he decided to do the same thing to the Poles.  Isn't this like all the nations?  Monkey See-Monkey do.  They learn by example.  If there's no punishment, they will continue to get away with the same behavior.

However, Turkey's side of the issue  was:  
1. "Rather, they point to an empire at the verge of collapse fighting for survival on various fronts, 
2. major European powers strategizing, at least since the 1870s, to exploit the spoils, including the manipulation of ethnic groups like the Ottoman Armenians, 
3. politically-motivated missionary activities within Ottoman Turkey (possibly coming from the Armenians) , 
4. radicalization and militarization of nationalistic Armenian groups, some of whom joined forces with the invading Russian army in the hope of creating an ethnically homogenous Armenian homeland.  
In other words, the Armenians were seditionists, a 5th column working against the government.  They had their own agenda in the fight and were taking advantage of the situation the Ottoman Empire found themselves in.  

An Armenian leader of that time, Katchaznouni, who became the first Prime Minister of the short lived independent Armenian Democratic Republic stated the following in 1923: “In the fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer units organized themselves and fought against the Turks…We had no doubt that the war would end with the complete victory of the Allies; Turkey would be defeated and dismembered…”   So within Turkey they had Armenians who were helping the enemy, and this brought on their total slaughter.  The Ottomans could not think of ways that were humanitarian to stop their help, evidently.  Their lack of humaneness.  

                                                                                    

German soldier 1914

Why did the Ottomans side with Germany August 1914

1. 1913's German military mission organized the Turkish army and navy and brought in the Turco-

German alliance.  

2. The Turkish Minister of War, Enver Pasha, was an opportunist.  He was one of 5 people in Turkey who knew that they had signed a secret treaty with Germany on August 2, 1914.   The Turkish people never knew what was going on.  

Enver Pasha (1881-1922)  

3. Germany had put pressure them to join by dangling their early victories.  Turkey was having problems with the Triple Entente.  

4.  Turkey joining caused Romania and Bulgaria to join the Axis team.  

5. Allies had interests in the Turkish Straits but didn't plan a defense of Turkey from Germany

Resource:  http://www.timesofisrael.com/why-israel-still-refuses-to-recognize-a-century-old-genocide/ Armenia-Turkey

http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-armenian-jews-where-they-came-from.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/2009/05/the-armenian-genocide-1915-1923
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-events-of-1915-and-the-turkish-armenian-controversy-over-history_-an-overview.en.mfa
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/ottoww1.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/demograhics.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/ww1.html
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-armenian-genocide-anniversary-20150424-htmlstory.html

Turkey: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Acceptance Into SCO or NATO

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

Turkey is a secular democratic country.  This is the scary part.  It is not a  democratic country like the USA and Israel but is proof of what can happen to even a democratic government. They have a separation of power, but what has happened to it?  Erdogan has a lot of this power. Their checks and balances in their type of parliamentary democracy either isn't working or everyone agrees that nothing is wrong.  Is he just a reflection of his people?  "The party of Prime Minister Erdogan, the Justice and Development Party, while known to be Islamic, sought to convey that it would be secular so as to avoid the army's preventing it from taking power."

We have many Turkish Jews that came to this country  along with all the other Jews from Russia and eastern Europe looking for a better life.   Turkish Jews settled in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. Some are my relatives.  A few families came here as early as the 1880's.  They came from Marmora and Constantinople.  They were in the fish market businesses.  It was said that they spoke Spanish.     What was it that drove them here?  Most likely "freedom."  What had Turkey been like?

For starters, Turkey was the hub of the Ottoman Empire that lasted for 400 years and ended with WWI.  That's because they took the side of the Axis with Germany and lost.  For that, they lost their empire in 1917 and Britain got the mandate of deciding what to do with Palestine, which was part of the empire.

In 1900, there were 350,000 Jews living in Turkey, who had the 3rd largest Jewish population at that time.  By 1990 20,000 Jews remained of which 18,000 lived in Istanbul.  37,000 of Turkey's Jews moved to Israel after 1948.  Turkey is the 7th largest country with a majority Muslim population of 73,722,988.  They have a mixture of Sunnis and Shiites who follow the Hanafi and Alevi fighs. We have almost 8 million people in Israel of which 6 million are Jewish. About 1.7 million are Arabs.

Turkey was the first country to recognize Israel in 1948.  "Military, strategic, and diplomatic cooperation between Turkey and Israel were accorded high priority by both countries, which shared concerns with respect to the regional instabilities in the Middle East."

Their friendship started to die during 2008's Gaza war.  This Muslim country was siding with all the other Muslim countries who support the Palestinian terrorists.  Relations had been fair  with Israel up until the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's  recent move towards embracing the Muslim Brotherhood. since that's his political party.  It's believed that Turkey wants to be the leader of the Muslim world.  Thus they are taking a tough stand and are showing their muscles.

  When their ship Marmara entered the waters to break the Gazan blockade in 2010 and Israel had to search their ship,  the attack was on.  Some Turks on board attacked the Israeli seamen and they in turn protected their own lives. 9 Turks were killed as a result.   Now Turkey wants retribution which is turning into a lot of money.  Netanyahu has apologized for the action when most of us feel it was Turkey that should have apologized, but that's politics.  The smaller country had to apologize to the larger one.

  Back in 1983 a friend of mine, Gene Hirshhorn LePere,  traveled to Turkey with a tour group.  She dawdled at a table of fine embroidery and her group  left her.  Along came a street peddler with a little statue insisting she buy it, which she finally relented and did, just to get him off her back.  When she departed from Turkey she was arrested and put in a woman's prison for stealing a precious antique.  She tells what prison was like in her book,  "Never Pass This Way Again," which was turned into an NBC TV special.  She almost didn't get out of prison and was in there for a shocking amount of time.  None of this happened because she was Jewish.  They didn't know.  Because of her horrible experience, Turkey fixed their laws about antiques now having tags on them. Her book is a warning to vacationers in foreign lands to beware.  Like Dorothy said, "We're not in Kansas, Toto!"  This is simply an example of an overzealous court system that works unfairly.

Erdogan is getting restless.  On January 25th of this year he said he was thinking of joining up with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).  This club, like a fraternity, is made up of Russia, China and the Soviet Central Asian republics.  Their goal is to be an authoritarian counterweight to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of NATO.  Why?  His bid to join the EU has been stalled and so he has become interested in their opposition.  He said that if President Vladimir Putin of Russia chooses Turkey for the SCO, Turkey will forget about joining the EU.  Notice that this choice has nothing to do with philosophy or ethics.  It's more like the mentality of a pledge getting into a fraternity.  It's his way of putting pressure on NATO for a decision.

Two years ago Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, told the SCO that the USA had caused the 9/11/2001 attacks in New York and are using it as an excuse for invading Afghanistan and Iraq and for killing and wounding over a million people.  That's the same excuse that Dzhokar Tsarnaev told authorities from his hospital bed that he and his brother, Tamerlan decided to blow up the Boston Marathon.  Now reports have come from him telling that their next project was to blow up a section of New York City afterwards.  They believed this sort of rot.  This is the group Erdogan is ready to join.

Today we have a fellow who has had an epiphany of 180 degrees who is a TV host in Turkey.  He now likes Jews. I pray that his feelings include Israel as well.   He's broadcasting about it and Sinem Tezyapar, another TV host who is a glamorous and very intelligent young lady,  is following suit.  This goes against the grain of their Prime Minister's philosophy, so I wish them well.  Their government has not been kind to people who disagree with this government.

The Tower tells of the Turkish government abusing the practice of detention without trial.  Over 75% of the country's jailed journalists were detained while awaiting trial or verdict.  There is an ongoing investigation into a large conspiracy of media personalities, politicians and generals to overthrow the government by a military coup.  150 people have been jailed on charges of being a party to this plot.  Just last year the government arrested the former chief of the military staff, Ilker Basbug, saying he was involved in the scheme even though he had retired 2 years ago.  Eric Edelman, former American Ambassador to Turkey told the Economist that this idea of Basbug being a terrorist and heading the group strained credulity.

So this man at the helm with so much power has been responsible for arrests, tax investigations, and condemnations which has chilled his constituents.  In 2008 he told a magazine that "either you close your journal down or you will not write lies".  They had reported about air pollution.  It must be that he doesn't want true facts confusing his people.

Turkey has a monopoly on words.  You can't use Kurdish as stated in a 1991 law.  Turkey has been persecuting Kurds insidiously.  On the books is the law that stating that you cannot insult the Turkish nation."  They have the power of giving the government wide authority to prosecute whomever it wants.  Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Prize-winning author committed the crime of acknowledging the reality of the Armenian genocide.  This was in a 2006 interview with a Swiss magazine.  The charges were finally dropped only because of  massive international pressure.

Resource: http://www.thetower.org/article/has-turkey-betrayed-the-west/
http://www.amazon.com/Never-Pass-This-Way-Again/dp/0917561384/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367004839&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Gene+Hirshhorn+LePere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Turkey_relations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-koch/turkey-is-seeking-leaders_b_2078869.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good,_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly, movie about 3 gunslingers