On April 24, one of the most tragic dates in the history of the Armenian people, the 100th anniversary of the genocide, will be celebrated all over the world. In other words, a century of bloody slaughter unleashed against the Armenian people.
The mass destruction and deportation of the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire was carried out by the ruling circles of Turkey in 1915-1923. The policy of genocide against Armenians was conditioned by a number of factors. Leading among them was the ideology of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism, which was professed by the ruling circles of the Ottoman Empire. The militant ideology of pan-Islamism was distinguished by intolerance towards non-Muslims, preached outright chauvinism, and called for the Turkification of all non-Turkish peoples. Entering the war (World War I), the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire made far-reaching plans for the creation of the "Big Turan". It was meant to annex the Transcaucasus, the North Caucasus, the Crimea, the Volga region, and Central Asia to the empire. On the way to this goal, the aggressors had to put an end, first of all, to the Armenian people, who opposed the aggressive plans of the Pan-Turkists.
The Young Turks began to develop plans for the extermination of the Armenian population even before the start of the World War. The decisions of the congress of the party "Unity and Progress" (Ittihad ve Terakki), held in October 1911 in Thessaloniki, contained a demand for the Turkification of the non-Turkish peoples of the empire. Following this, the political and military circles of Turkey came to the decision to carry out the Armenian genocide throughout the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of 1914, a special order was sent to the local authorities regarding the measures to be taken against the Armenians. The fact that the order was sent out before the start of the war irrefutably testifies that the extermination of the Armenians was a planned action, not at all due to a specific military situation.
The leadership of the Unity and Progress party has repeatedly discussed the issue of mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population. In September 1914, at a meeting chaired by Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, a special body was formed - the Executive Committee of the Three, which was instructed to organize the massacre of the Armenian population; it included the leaders of the Young Turks Nazim, Behaetdin Shakir and Shukri. Plotting a monstrous crime, the leaders of the Young Turks took into account that the war provides an opportunity for its implementation. Nazim directly stated that such an opportunity may no longer exist, “the intervention of the great powers and the protest of the newspapers will not have any consequences, because they will face a fait accompli, and thus the issue will be resolved ... Our actions should be aimed at destroying Armenians so that not a single one of them is left alive.
From the very first days of the war, a frenzied anti-Armenian propaganda unfolded in Turkey. The Turkish people were inspired that the Armenians did not want to serve in the Turkish army, that they were ready to cooperate with the enemy. There were rumors about the mass desertion of Armenians from the Turkish army, about the uprisings of Armenians threatening the rear of the Turkish troops, etc. The unbridled chauvinist propaganda against the Armenians especially intensified after the first serious defeats of the Turkish troops on the Caucasian front. In February 1915, Minister of War Enver ordered the extermination of Armenians serving in the Turkish army. At the beginning of the war, about 60 thousand Armenians aged 18-45 were drafted into the Turkish army, that is, the most combat-ready part of the male population. This order was carried out with unparalleled cruelty. And on April 24, 1915, a blow was dealt to the Armenian intelligentsia.
From May to June 1915, the mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population of Western Armenia (the vilayets of Van, Erzrum, Bitlis, Kharberd, Sebastia, Diyarbekir), Cilicia, Western Anatolia and other areas began. The ongoing deportation of the Armenian population in fact pursued the goal of its destruction. The real purpose of the deportation was also known to Germany, an ally of Turkey. The German consul in Trebizond in July 1915 reported on the deportation of Armenians in this vilayet and noted that the Young Turks intended to put an end to the Armenian issue in this way.
The Armenians who left their places of permanent residence were reduced to caravans that went deep into the empire, to Mesopotamia and Syria, where special camps were created for them. Armenians were exterminated both in their places of residence and on their way to exile; their caravans were attacked by Turkish rabble, Kurdish robber bands, hungry for prey. As a result, a small part of the deported Armenians reached their destinations. But even those who reached the deserts of Mesopotamia were not safe; there are cases when deported Armenians were taken out of the camps and massacred by the thousands in the desert.
Lack of basic sanitary conditions, famine, epidemics caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. The actions of the Turkish rioters were distinguished by unprecedented cruelty. This was demanded by the leaders of the Young Turks. Thus, Minister of the Interior Talaat, in a secret telegram sent to the Governor of Aleppo, demanded to put an end to the existence of the Armenians, not to pay any attention to age, gender, or remorse. This requirement was strictly observed. Eyewitnesses of the events, Armenians who survived the horrors of deportation and genocide, left numerous descriptions of the incredible suffering that befell the Armenian population.
Most of the Armenian population of Cilicia was also subjected to barbaric extermination. The massacre of Armenians continued in subsequent years. Thousands of Armenians were exterminated, driven to the southern regions of the Ottoman Empire and kept in the camps of Ras-ul-Ain, Deir ez-Zor, etc. The Young Turks sought to carry out the Armenian genocide in Eastern Armenia, where, in addition to the local population, large masses of refugees from Western Armenia. Having committed aggression against Transcaucasia in 1918, Turkish troops carried out pogroms and massacres of Armenians in many areas of Eastern Armenia and Azerbaijan. Having occupied Baku in September 1918, the Turkish invaders, together with the Caucasian Tatars, organized a terrible massacre of the local Armenian population, killing 30,000 people.
As a result of the Armenian genocide carried out by the Young Turks, 1.5 million people died in 1915-1916 alone. About 600 thousand Armenians became refugees; they scattered over many countries of the world, replenishing the existing ones and forming new Armenian communities. An Armenian diaspora (Diaspora) was formed. As a result of the genocide, Western Armenia lost its original population. The leaders of the Young Turks did not hide their satisfaction with the successful implementation of the planned atrocity: German diplomats in Turkey informed their government that already in August 1915, Minister of the Interior Talaat cynically stated that “the actions against the Armenians were basically carried out and the Armenian question no longer exists” .
The relative ease with which the Turkish pogromists managed to carry out the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire is partly due to the unpreparedness of the Armenian population, as well as the Armenian political parties, for the impending threat of extermination. In many respects, the actions of the pogromists were facilitated by the mobilization of the most combat-ready part of the Armenian population - men, into the Turkish army, as well as the liquidation of the Armenian intelligentsia of Constantinople. A certain role was also played by the fact that in some public and clerical circles of Western Armenians they believed that disobedience to the Turkish authorities, who ordered the deportation, could only lead to an increase in the number of victims.
However, in some places the Armenian population offered stubborn resistance to the Turkish vandals. The Armenians of Van, having resorted to self-defense, successfully repulsed the attacks of the enemy, held the city in their hands until the arrival of Russian troops and Armenian volunteers. Armed resistance to the many times superior enemy forces was provided by the Armenians Shapin Garakhisar, Mush, Sasun, Shatakh. The epic of the defenders of Mount Musa in Suetia continued for forty days. The self-defense of the Armenians in 1915 is a heroic page in the national liberation struggle of the people.
During the aggression against Armenia in 1918, the Turks, having occupied Karaklis, massacred the Armenian population, killing several thousand people.
During the Turkish-Armenian war of 1920, Turkish troops occupied Alexandropol. Continuing the policy of their predecessors - the Young Turks, the Kemalists sought to organize genocide in Eastern Armenia, where, in addition to the local population, masses of refugees from Western Armenia had accumulated. In Alexandropol and the villages of the district, the Turkish invaders committed atrocities, destroyed the peaceful Armenian population, and robbed property. The Revolutionary Committee of Soviet Armenia received information about the atrocities of the Kemalists. One of the reports said: “About 30 villages were slaughtered in the Alexandropol district and the Akhalkalaki region, some of those who managed to escape are in the most distressed situation.” Other reports described the situation in the villages of the Alexandropol district: “All the villages have been robbed, there is no shelter, no grain, no clothes, no fuel. The streets of the villages are full of corpses. All this is supplemented by hunger and cold, taking away one victim after another ... In addition, askers and hooligans taunt their captives and try to punish the people with even more brutal means, rejoicing and enjoying it. They subject their parents to various torments, force them to hand over their 8-9-year-old girls to the executioners…”
In January 1921, the government of Soviet Armenia protested to the Turkish Commissar for Foreign Affairs over the fact that Turkish troops in the Alexandropol district were carrying out "continuous violence, robberies and murders against the peaceful working population ...". Tens of thousands of Armenians became victims of the atrocities of the Turkish invaders. The invaders also inflicted enormous material damage on the Alexandropol district.
In 1918-1920, the city of Shushi, the center of Karabakh, became the scene of pogroms and massacres of the Armenian population. In September 1918, Turkish troops, supported by Azerbaijani Musavatists, moved to Shushi. Ruining the Armenian villages along the way and destroying their population, on September 25, 1918, Turkish troops occupied Shushi. But soon, after the defeat of Turkey in the First World War, they were forced to leave it. In December of the same year, the British entered Shushi. Soon Musavatist Khosrov-bek Sultanov was appointed governor-general of Karabakh. With the help of Turkish military instructors, he formed shock Kurdish detachments, which, together with parts of the Musavatist army, were deployed in the Armenian part of Shushi. The forces of the rioters were constantly replenished, there were many Turkish officers in the city. In June 1919, the first pogroms of the Armenians of Shusha took place; on the night of June 5, at least 500 Armenians were killed in the city and surrounding villages. On March 23, 1920, Turkish-Musavat gangs perpetrated a terrible massacre of the Armenian population of Shusha, killing over 30 thousand people and setting fire to the Armenian part of the city.
The Armenians of Cilicia, who survived the genocide of 1915-1916 and found refuge in other countries, began to return to their homeland after the defeat of Turkey. According to the division of zones of influence stipulated by the allies, Cilicia was included in the sphere of influence of France. In 1919, 120-130 thousand Armenians lived in Cilicia; the return of Armenians continued, and by 1920 their number had reached 160,000. The command of the French troops located in Cilicia did not take measures to ensure the security of the Armenian population; Turkish authorities remained on the ground, the Muslims were not disarmed. This was used by the Kemalists, who began the massacre of the Armenian population. In January 1920, during the 20-day pogroms, 11,000 Armenians died - the inhabitants of Mavash, the rest of the Armenians went to Syria. Soon the Turks laid siege to Ajn, where the Armenian population by that time barely numbered 6,000 people. The Armenians of Ajna offered stubborn resistance to the Turkish troops, which lasted 7 months, but in October the Turks managed to take the city. About 400 defenders of Ajna managed to break through the siege ring and escape.
At the beginning of 1920, the remnants of the Armenian population of Urfa moved to Aleppo - about 6 thousand people.
On April 1, 1920, Kemalist troops besieged Ayntap. Thanks to the 15-day heroic defense, the Aintap Armenians escaped the massacre. But after the French troops left Cilicia, the Armenians of Ayntap at the end of 1921 moved to Syria. In 1920, the Kemalists destroyed the remnants of the Armenian population of Zeytun. That is, the Kemalists completed the extermination of the Armenian population of Cilicia begun by the Young Turks.
The last episode of the tragedy of the Armenian people was the massacre of Armenians in the western regions of Turkey during the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922. In August - September 1921, Turkish troops achieved a turning point in the course of hostilities and launched a general offensive against the Greek troops. On September 9, the Turks broke into Izmir and massacred the Greek and Armenian population. The Turks sank ships that were in the harbor of Izmir, on which were Armenian and Greek refugees, mostly women, old people, children ...
The Armenian genocide carried out in Turkey caused enormous damage to the material and spiritual culture of the Armenian people. In 1915-1923 and subsequent years, thousands of Armenian manuscripts kept in Armenian monasteries were destroyed, hundreds of historical and architectural monuments were destroyed, and the shrines of the people were desecrated. The tragedy experienced affected all aspects of the life and social behavior of the Armenian people, firmly settled in its historical memory.
The progressive public opinion of the world condemned the villainous crime of the Turkish pogromists, who were trying to destroy one of the most ancient civilized peoples of the world. Public and political figures, scientists, cultural figures of many countries branded the genocide, qualifying it as the gravest crime against humanity, took part in the implementation of humanitarian assistance to the Armenian people, in particular to refugees who found shelter in many countries of the world. After the defeat of Turkey in the First World War, the leaders of the Young Turks were accused of dragging Turkey into a disastrous war for her, and put on trial. Among the charges brought against war criminals were the organization and implementation of the massacre of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. However, a number of Young Turk leaders were sentenced to death in absentia, because after the defeat of Turkey they managed to escape from the country. The death sentence against some of them (Taliat, Behaetdin Shakir, Jemal Pasha, Said Halim, etc.) was subsequently carried out by the Armenian people's avengers.
After World War II, genocide was classified as the gravest crime against humanity. The legal documents on the genocide were based on the principles developed by the international military tribunal in Nuremberg, which tried the main war criminals of Nazi Germany. Subsequently, the UN adopted a number of decisions regarding genocide, the main of which are the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and the Convention on the Non-Applicability of the Limitation Period to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (1968).
In 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR passed a law condemning the Armenian genocide in Western Armenia and Turkey as a crime against humanity. The Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR asked the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to adopt a decision condemning the Armenian genocide in Turkey. The Declaration of Independence of Armenia, adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR on August 23, 1990, proclaims that "The Republic of Armenia supports the cause of international recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia."
http://www.pulsosetii.ru/article/4430
The Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915, organized on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, became one of the most terrible events of its era. Representatives were deported, during which hundreds of thousands or even millions of people died (depending on estimates). This campaign to exterminate Armenians is today recognized as genocide by most countries of the entire world community. Turkey itself does not agree with this wording.
Prerequisites
The massacres and deportations in the Ottoman Empire had different backgrounds and reasons. 1915 was due to the unequal position of the Armenians themselves and the ethnic Turkish majority of the country. The population was discredited not only by nationality, but also by religion. The Armenians were Christians and had their own independent church. The Turks were Sunnis.
The non-Muslim population had the status of a dhimmi. People who fell under this definition were not allowed to carry weapons and to appear in court as witnesses. They had to pay high taxes. Armenians, for the most part, lived in poverty. They were mainly engaged in agriculture in their native lands. However, among the Turkish majority, the stereotype of a successful and cunning Armenian businessman was widespread, etc. Such labels only aggravated the hatred of the townsfolk towards this ethnic minority. These complex relationships can be compared to the widespread anti-Semitism in many countries of that time.
In the Caucasian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the situation worsened also due to the fact that these lands, after the wars with Russia, were filled with Muslim refugees, who, due to their everyday disorder, constantly came into conflict with local Armenians. One way or another, but the Turkish society was in an excited state. It was ready to accept the forthcoming Armenian genocide (1915). The reasons for this tragedy were a deep split and hostility between the two peoples. All that was needed was a spark that would ignite a huge fire.
Start of World War I
As a result of an armed coup in 1908, the Ittihat (Unity and Progress) party came to power in the Ottoman Empire. Its members called themselves the Young Turks. The new government hastily began to look for an ideology on which to build their state. Pan-Turkism and Turkish nationalism were taken as the basis - ideas that did not presuppose anything good for Armenians and other ethnic minorities.
In 1914, the Ottoman Empire, in the wake of its new political course, entered into an alliance with Imperial Germany. According to the treaty, the powers agreed to provide Turkey with access to the Caucasus, where numerous Muslim peoples lived. But there were also Armenian Christians in the same region.
Assassinations of Young Turk leaders
On March 15, 1921, in Berlin, in front of many witnesses, an Armenian killed Talaat Pasha, who was hiding in Europe under an assumed name. The shooter was immediately arrested by the German police. The trial has begun. Tehlirian volunteered to defend the best lawyers in Germany. The process led to a wide public outcry. Numerous facts of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire were again voiced at the hearings. Tehlirian was sensationally acquitted. After that, he emigrated to the United States, where he died in 1960.
Another important victim of Operation Nemesis was Ahmed Jemal Pasha, who was killed in Tiflis in 1922. In the same year, another member of the triumvirate Enver died during the fighting with the Red Army in present-day Tajikistan. He fled to Central Asia, where for some time he was an active participant in the Basmachi movement.
Legal assessment
It should be noted that the term "genocide" appeared in the legal lexicon much later than the events described. The word originated in 1943 and originally meant the mass murder of Jews by the Nazi authorities of the Third Reich. A few years later, the term was officially fixed in accordance with the convention of the newly created UN. Later, the events in the Ottoman Empire were recognized as the Armenian genocide in 1915. In particular, this was done by the European Parliament and the UN.
In 1995, the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was recognized as genocide in the Russian Federation. Today the majority of states of the USA, almost all countries of Europe and South America adhere to the same point of view. But there are also countries where the Armenian Genocide (1915) is denied. The reasons, in short, remain political. First of all, the list of these states includes modern Türkiye and Azerbaijan.
Translation from Armenian
1. The Persian Meshali Haji Ibrahim narrated the following:
“In May 1915, the governor of Tahsin Bey summoned Amvanli Eyyub-ogly Gadir’s chetebashi and, showing him the order received from Constantinople, said: “I entrust the local Armenians to you, bring them unharmed to Kemakh, where the Kurds will attack them and other. You will pretend that you want to protect them, you will even use weapons against the attackers once or twice, but, in the end, you will show that you cannot cope with them, you will leave and return. After a little thought, Gadir said: “You order me to take the sheep and lambs tied hand and foot to the slaughterhouse; this is cruelty not befitting me; I am a soldier, send me against the enemy, let him either hit me with a bullet, and I will fall bravely, or I will hit him and save my country, and I will never agree to stain my hands in the blood of innocents. The governor strongly insisted that he carry out the order, but the generous Gadyr flatly refused. Then the governor summoned Mirza-bek Veranshekherli and made him the above proposal. This one also claimed that there was no need to kill. Already in such conditions, he said, you put the Armenians that they themselves will die on the way, and Mesopotamia is such a hot country that they will not stand it, they will die. But the governor insisted on his own, and Mirza accepted the offer. Mirza fully fulfilled his cruel obligation. Four months later he returned to Erzurum with 360,000 lire; He gave 90 thousand to Tahsin, 90 thousand to the corps commander Mahmud Kamil, 90 thousand to the defterdar, and the rest to the meherdar, Seifulla and accomplices. However, when dividing this booty, a dispute arose between them, and the governor arrested Mirza. And Mirza threatened to make such revelations that the world would be surprised; Then he was released." Eyub-ogly Gadyr and Mirza Veranshekherli personally told this story to the Persian Mashadi Haji Ibrahim.
2. Persian camel driver Kerbalai Ali-Memed told the following: “I was transporting ammunition from Erzinjan to Erzurum. One day in June 1915, when I drove up to the Khotursky bridge, a stunning sight appeared before my eyes. A myriad of human corpses filled the 12 spans of the large bridge, damming the river so that it changed course and ran past the bridge. It was terrible to watch; I stood with my caravan for a long time until these corpses floated by and I was able to cross the bridge. But from the bridge to Ginis, the whole road was littered with the corpses of old men, women and children, which had already decomposed, swollen and stinking. The stench was so terrible that it was impossible to pass along the road; my two cameleers fell ill and died from this stench, and I was forced to change my way. These were the victims and traces of an unheard-of and terrible atrocity. And all these were the corpses of Armenians, unfortunate Armenians.”
3. Alaftar Ibrahim-effendi told the following: “A very tough and urgent order was received on the eviction of Armenians from Constantinople with the following content: cut without mercy all men from 14 to 65 years of age, do not touch children, the elderly and women, but leave and turn into Mohammedanism."
TsGIA Arm, SSR, f. 57, op. 1, e, 632, f. 17-18.
on "The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire", edited by M.G. Nersisyan, M.1982, pp.311-313
Original taken from mamlas in Why Armenians are not Jews
On this topic: Genocide: no statute of limitations... || History of the Armenians of Georgia || That's where the example of the Nazis took || Ordinary Armenian Genocide || I am Armenian, but I am against Nazism on the genocide
Holocaust rehearsal
Armenian question: how "dangerous microbes" were made from "potential rebels"
Genocide, concentration camps, experiments on people, the "national question" - all these horrors in the public mind are most often associated with the Second World War, although, in fact, their inventors were by no means the Nazis. Entire peoples - Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks - were brought to the brink of complete annihilation at the beginning of the 20th century, during the years of the Great War. And back in 1915, the leaders of England, France and Russia, in connection with these events, for the first time in history, voiced the wording "crimes against humanity." ©
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Deported Armenian women, children and old people. Ottoman Empire. 1915
Today's Armenia is only a small part of the territory where millions of Armenians lived for centuries. In 1915, they - mostly unarmed civilians - were expelled from their homes, deported to concentration camps in the desert, killed in every possible way. In most civilized countries of the world, this is officially recognized as genocide, and to this day those tragic events continue to poison the relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan with Armenia.
"Armenian Question"
The Armenian people formed on the territory of the South Caucasus and modern Eastern Turkey many centuries earlier than the Turkish people: already in the second century BC, the kingdom of Great Armenia existed on the shores of Lake Van, around the sacred Mount Ararat. In the best years of the possession of this "empire" covered almost the entire mountainous "triangle" between the Black, Caspian and Mediterranean seas.
In 301, Armenia became the first country to officially adopt Christianity as a state religion. In the future, for centuries, the Armenians defended themselves from the attacks of Muslims (Arabs, Persians and Turks). This led to the loss of a number of territories, a decrease in the number of people, and their dispersion throughout the world. By the beginning of the new time, only a small part of Armenia with the city of Erivan (Yerevan) became part of the Russian Empire, where the Armenians found protection and patronage. Most of the Armenians fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and Muslims began to actively settle on their lands - Turks, Kurds, refugees from the North Caucasus.
Not being Muslims, the Armenians, like the Balkan peoples, were considered representatives of the "second-class" community - "dhimmi". Until 1908, they were forbidden to carry weapons, they had to pay higher taxes, often they could not even live in houses higher than one floor, build new churches without the permission of the authorities, and so on.
But, as often happens, the persecution of Eastern Christians only increased the disclosure of the talents of an entrepreneur, trader, artisan, capable of working in the most difficult conditions. By the 20th century, an impressive stratum of the Armenian intelligentsia had also formed, and the first national parties and public organizations began to emerge. Literacy rates among Armenians and other Christians in the Ottoman Empire were higher than among Muslims.
70% of Armenians, however, remained simple peasants, but among the Muslim population there was a stereotype of a cunning and rich Armenian, a “merchant from the market”, whose success a simple Turk envied. The situation was somewhat reminiscent of the position of the Jews in Europe, their discrimination and, as a result, the emergence of a powerful stratum of wealthy Jews due to hard “natural selection”, who do not fold in the most severe conditions. However, in the case of the Armenians, the situation was further aggravated by the presence in Turkey of a huge number of impoverished Muslim refugees from the North Caucasus, from the Crimea and from the Balkans (the so-called Muhajirs).
The scale of this phenomenon is evidenced by the fact that by the time of the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, refugees and their descendants accounted for up to 20% of the population, and the entire era from the 1870s to 1913 is known in Turkish historical memory as "sekyumu" - "disaster" . The last wave of Turks expelled by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks swept just on the eve of the First World War - they were refugees from the Balkan wars. Often they transferred the hatred from the European Christians who expelled them to the Christians of the Ottoman Empire. They were ready, roughly speaking, to “revenge”, robbing and killing defenseless Armenians, although in the Balkan wars up to 8 thousand Armenian soldiers fought against the Bulgarians and Serbs in the ranks of the Turkish army.
First pogroms
The first waves of Armenian pogroms swept through the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. It was the so-called Erzurum massacre of 1895, massacres in Istanbul, Van, Sasun and other cities. According to the American researcher Robert Andersen, already at that time at least 60,000 Christians were killed, who were “pressed like grapes,” which even provoked protests from the ambassadors of European powers. The German Lutheran missionary Johannes Lepsius collected evidence of the extermination of at least 88,243 Armenians in 1894-96 alone and the robbery of more than half a million. In response, the Armenian Dashnaks, driven to despair, staged a terrorist attack - on August 26, 1896, they seized hostages in a bank building in Istanbul and, threatening with an explosion, demanded that the Turkish government implement reforms.
But the coming to power of the Young Turks, who announced a course of reform, did not improve the situation. In 1907, a new wave of Armenian pogroms swept through the cities of the Mediterranean. Thousands of people died again. In addition, it was the Young Turks who encouraged the resettlement of refugees from the Balkans to the Armenian lands (about 400 thousand people were settled there), banned public organizations with “non-Turkish” goals.
In response, the Armenian political parties turned to the European powers for support, and with their active support (primarily from Russia), a plan was imposed on the weakened Ottoman Empire, which finally provided for the creation of two autonomies from six Armenian regions and the city of Trebizond. They, in agreement with the Ottomans, were to be controlled by representatives of the European powers. In Constantinople, of course, they perceived this option for resolving the “Armenian issue” as a national humiliation, which later played a role in the decision to enter the war on the side of Germany.
Potential rebels
In the First World War, all the warring countries actively used (or at least sought to use) "potentially rebellious" ethnic communities in the territory of the enemy - national minorities, one way or another suffering from discrimination and oppression. The Germans supported the British Irish in their struggle for their rights, the British supported the Arabs, the Austro-Hungarians supported the Ukrainians, and so on. Well, the Russian Empire actively supported the Armenians, for whom, compared to the Turks, it, as a predominantly Christian country, was at least the "lesser of the evils." With the participation and assistance of Russia, at the end of 1914, an allied Armenian militia was formed, commanded by the legendary General Andranik Ozanyan.
The Armenian battalions provided great assistance to the Russians in the defense of northwestern Persia, where the Turks also invaded later during the battles on the Caucasian front. Through them, weapons and groups of saboteurs were supplied to the Ottoman rear, where they managed to carry out, for example, sabotage on telegraph lines near Van, attacks on Turkish units in Bitlis.
Also in December 1914 - January 1915, the Sarykamysh battle took place on the border of the Russian and Ottoman empires, in which the Turks suffered a crushing defeat, losing 78 thousand soldiers killed, wounded and frostbite out of 80 thousand participating in the battles. Russian troops captured the border fortress of Bayazet, expelled the Turks from Persia and advanced deep into Turkish territory with the help of Armenians from the border areas, which caused the leaders of the Young Turk party Ittihat another flurry of reasoning "about the betrayal of the Armenians in general."
Enver Pasha
Subsequently, critics of the concept of genocide in relation to the entire Armenian people will cite these arguments as the main ones: the Armenians were not even “potential”, but accomplished rebels, they were “the first to start”, they killed Muslims. However, in the winter of 1914-1915, most Armenians still lived a peaceful life, many men were even drafted into the Turkish army and honestly served their country, as it seemed to them. The leader of the Young Turks, Enver Pasha, even publicly thanked the Armenians for their loyalty during the Sarykamysh operation, sending a letter to the archbishop of Konya province.
However, the moment of enlightenment was brief. The "first sign" of a new round of repressions was the disarmament in February 1915 of about 100 thousand soldiers of Armenian (and at the same time - Assyrian and Greek origin) and their transfer to rear work. Many Armenian historians claim that some of the conscripts were immediately killed. The confiscation of weapons from the civilian Armenian population began, which alerted (and, as it soon turned out, rightly so) people: many Armenians began to hide pistols and rifles.
US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau subsequently called this disarmament "a prelude to the annihilation of the Armenians". In some cities, the Turkish authorities took hundreds of hostages until the Armenians surrendered their "arsenals". Collected weapons were often photographed and sent to Istanbul as evidence of "betrayal". This became a pretext for further whipping up hysteria.
In Armenia, April 24 is celebrated as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide. This is a non-working day: every year hundreds of thousands of people climb the hill to the memorial complex in memory of the victims of the First World War, lay flowers at the eternal flame. The memorial itself was built back in Soviet times, in the 1960s, which was an exception to all the rules: in the USSR, they did not like to remember the First World War.
The date of April 24 was not chosen by chance: it was on this day in 1915 that mass arrests of representatives of the Armenian elite took place in Istanbul. In total, more than 5.5 thousand people were captured, including 235 of the most famous and respected people - businessmen, journalists, scientists, those whose voice could be heard in the world, who could lead the resistance.
A month later, on May 26, the Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire, Talaat Pasha, presented a whole "Law on Deportation" dedicated to "the fight against those who oppose the government." Four days later, he was approved by the Majlis (parliament). Although the Armenians were not mentioned there, it was clear that the law was written primarily "for their souls", as well as for the Assyrians, Pontic Greeks and other "infidels". According to researcher Fuat Dündar, Talaat stated that "the deportation was carried out in order to finally resolve the Armenian issue." So, even in the term itself, later used by the Nazis, there is nothing new.
Biological justification was used as one of the justifications for the deportation and murder of Armenians. Some Ottoman chauvinists called them "dangerous microbes". The main propagandist of this policy was the governor of the district and the city of Diyarbakir, Dr. Mehmet Reshid, who "had fun", among other things, by nailing horseshoes to the feet of the deportees. US Ambassador Morgenthau, in a telegram to the State Department dated July 16, 1915, described the extermination of the Armenians as a "campaign of racial extermination."
Placed on the Armenians and medical experiments. By order of another "doctor" - 3rd Army doctor Teftik Salim - to develop a vaccine against typhus, experiments were carried out in Erzincan hospital on disarmed soldiers, most of whom eventually died. The experiments were carried out directly by the professor of the medical school of Istanbul, Hamdi Suat, who injected blood infected with typhus into experimental subjects. By the way, he was later recognized as the founder of Turkish bacteriology. After the end of the war, during the consideration of the case by the Special Military Tribunal, he said that he "worked only with convicted criminals."
In the phase of "ethnic cleansing"
But even simple deportation was not limited to sending people in railway cattle cars to barbed-wire concentration camps in the desert (the most famous is Deir ez-Zor in the east of modern Syria), where most died of hunger, unsanitary conditions or thirst. Often it was accompanied by massacres, which took on the most disgusting character in the Black Sea city of Trebizond.
Armenian refugee camp
Official Said Ahmed described what was happening in an interview with British diplomat Mark Sykes: “At first, the Ottoman officials took away the children, some of them the American consul tried to save. The Muslims of Trebizond were warned of the death penalty for defending the Armenians. Then they separated the adult men, declaring that they should take part in the work. Women and children were sent towards Mosul, after which the men were shot at pre-dug ditches. Women and children were attacked by “chettes” (released from prisons in exchange for the cooperation of criminals - RP), who robbed and raped women, and then killed them. The military had strict orders not to interfere with the Chettes.
As a result of the investigation conducted by the tribunal of 1919, the facts of poisoning of Armenian children (right in schools) and pregnant women by the head of the Trebizond Health Department Ali Seib became known. Mobile steam baths were also used, in which children were killed with superheated steam.
The killings were accompanied by robberies. According to the merchant Mehmet Ali, the governor of Trebizond Jemal Azmi and Ali Seib embezzled jewelry worth from 300,000 to 400,000 Turkish gold pounds. The American consul in Trebizond reported seeing daily "a crowd of Turkish women and children following the police like vultures and seizing everything they could carry", and the house of Commissioner Ittihat in Trebizond was full of gold.
Beautiful girls were publicly raped and then killed, including by local officials. In 1919, at the tribunal, the chief of police of Trebizond said that he was sending young Armenian women to Istanbul as a gift from the governor to the leaders of the Young Turks. Armenian women and children from another Black Sea city, Ordu, were loaded onto barges and then taken out to sea and thrown overboard.
Historian Ruben Adalyan in his book “Armenian Genocide” cites the memories of miraculously survived Takuhi Levonyan: “During the march we had no water and food. We walked for 15 days. There were no shoes left on his feet. Finally we reached Tigranakert. There we washed by the water, soaked some dry bread and ate. There was a rumor that the governor wanted a very beautiful 12-year-old girl... At night they came with lanterns and were looking for one. They found it, took it away from the sobbing mother and said that they would return it later. They later returned the child, almost dead, in a terrible state. The mother sobbed loudly, and of course the child, unable to bear what had happened, died. The women could not comfort her. Finally the women dug a hole and buried the girl. There was a big wall and my mother wrote on it, "Here Shushan is buried."
Public executions of Armenians on the streets of Constantinople
An important role in the persecution of Armenians was played by the organization "Teshkilat-i-Mahusa" (translated from Turkish - Special Organization) with headquarters in Erzurum, subordinate to Turkish counterintelligence and equipped with tens of thousands of "chettes". The leader of the organization was a prominent Young Turk, Behaeddin Shakir. At the end of April 1915, he organized a rally in Erzurum at which the Armenians were accused of betrayal. After that, attacks began on the Armenians of the Erzurum region, and in mid-May a massacre took place in the city of Hynys, where 19,000 people were killed. The villagers from the outskirts of Erzurum were deported to the city, where some of them died of starvation, and some were thrown into the river in the Kemakh gorge. Only 100 "useful Armenians" were left in Erzurum, who worked at important military installations.
According to the American historian Richard Hovhannisyan, who grew up in a family of Armenian refugees, 15,000 Armenians were also killed in the city of Bitlis, not far from Van. Most were thrown into a mountain river, and their houses were handed over to Turkish refugees from the Balkans. In the vicinity of Mush, Armenian women and children were burned alive in boarded-up sheds.
The extermination of the population was accompanied by a campaign to destroy the cultural heritage. Architectural monuments and churches were blown up, cemeteries were plowed up for fields, the Armenian quarters of the cities were occupied by the Muslim population and renamed.
Resistance
On April 27, 1915, the Armenian Catholicos called on the United States and Italy, which were still neutral in the war, to intervene and prevent the killings. The allied powers of the Entente countries publicly condemned the massacre, but in the conditions of war they could do little to alleviate their plight. In a joint Declaration dated May 24, 1915, Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire spoke for the first time about "crimes against humanity": "In view of the new crimes, the governments of the Allied States publicly declare to the Sublime Porte that all members of the Ottoman government are personally responsible for these crimes." Fundraising began in Europe and the United States to help Armenian refugees.
Even among the Turks themselves, there were those who opposed the repressions against the Armenian population. The courage of these people should be especially noted, because in the conditions of war for such a position one could easily pay with one's life. Dr. Jemal Haidar, who witnessed human medical experiments, described them as "barbaric" and "scientific crimes" in an open letter to the Minister of the Interior. Haidar was supported by the chief physician of the Erzincan Red Crescent Hospital, Dr. Salaheddin.
There are cases of saving Armenian children by Turkish families, as well as speeches by officials who refused to take part in the killings. Thus, the head of the city of Aleppo, Jalal Bey, spoke out against the deportation of Armenians, saying that "Armenians are defending themselves" and that "the right to live is the natural right of any person." In June 1915, he was removed from office and replaced with a more "nationally oriented" official.
The governor of Adrianople, Hadji Adil Bey, and even the first head of the Deir ez-Zor concentration camp, Ali Sued Bey, tried to alleviate the fate of the Armenians as best they could (he was also soon dismissed from his post). But the most firm was the position of the governor of the city of Smyrna (now Izmir) Rahmi Bey, who managed to defend the right of Armenians and Greeks to live in their native city. He provided convincing calculations for official Istanbul that the expulsion of Christians would deal a mortal blow to trade, and therefore most of the local Armenians lived relatively quietly until the end of the war. True, about 200 thousand citizens died already in 1922, during another Greco-Turkish war. Only a few managed to escape, among whom, by the way, was the future Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis.
Protested against the inhuman actions of the allies and the German ambassador in Constantinople, Count von Wolf-Metternich. The German doctor Armin Wegner has collected a large photo archive - his photograph of an Armenian woman walking under a Turkish escort has become one of the symbols of 1915. Martin Nipage, a German teacher at a technical school in Aleppo, wrote a whole book about the barbaric massacres of Armenians. Missionary Johannes Lepsius managed to visit Constantinople again, but his requests to the leader of the Young Turks Enver Pasha for the protection of the Armenians remained unanswered. Upon his return to Germany, Lepsius tried without much success to draw public attention to the situation in the allied country for the Germans. Numerous facts of the murders of Armenians were described in his book by Rafael de Nogales Mendez, a Venezuelan officer who served in the Ottoman army.
But first of all, of course, the Armenians themselves resisted. After the start of the deportations, uprisings broke out throughout the country. From April 19 to May 16, the inhabitants of the city of Van heroically held the line, with only 1,300 "fighters" - partly from among the elderly, women and children. Having lost hundreds of soldiers and failed to take the city, the Turks ravaged the surrounding Armenian villages, killing thousands of civilians. But up to 70,000 Armenians hiding in Van eventually escaped - they waited for the advancing Russian army.
The second case of a successful rescue was the defense of Mount Musa Dagh by the Mediterranean Armenians from July 21 to September 12, 1915. 600 militia held back the onslaught of several thousand soldiers for almost two months. On September 12, posters hung on trees calling for help were noticed by an Allied cruiser. Soon, an Anglo-French squadron approached the foot of the mountain overlooking the sea, which evacuated more than 4,000 Armenians. Almost all other Armenian uprisings - in Sasun, Mush, Urfa and other cities of Turkey - ended in their suppression and the death of the defenders.
Soghomon Tehlirian
After the war, at the congress of the Armenian party "Dashnaktsutyun" it was decided to launch a "retribution operation" - the elimination of war criminals. The operation was named after the ancient Greek goddess Nemesis. Most of the performers were Armenians who had escaped the genocide and were determined to avenge the death of their loved ones.
The most famous victim of the operation was the former Minister of the Interior and Grand Vizier (Chief Minister) Talaat Pasha. Together with other leaders of the Young Turks, he fled to Germany in 1918, went into hiding, but was tracked down and shot dead in March 1921. The German court acquitted his murderer, Soghomon Tehlirian, with the wording "temporary loss of mind due to the suffering experienced," especially since Talaat Pasha had already been sentenced to death in his homeland by a military tribunal. The Armenians also found and destroyed several more ideologists of the massacres, including the already mentioned governor of Trebizond Jemal Azmi, the leader of the Young Turks Behaeddin Shakir and another former grand vizier Said Halim Pasha.
Genocide controversy
Is it possible to call what happened in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 a genocide, there is still no consensus in the world, mainly because of the position of Turkey itself. American-Israeli sociologist, one of the leading experts on the history of genocides, founder and executive director of the Holocaust and Genocide Institute, Israel Czerny, noted that “the Armenian genocide is remarkable because in the bloody 20th century it was an early example of mass genocide, which many recognize as rehearsal of the Holocaust.
One of the most controversial issues is the number of victims - an accurate count of the number of dead is impossible, because the very statistics on the number of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the First World War was very crafty, deliberately distorted. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which quotes the calculations of the famous historian Arnold Toynbee, about 600 thousand Armenians died in 1915, and the American political scientist and historian Rudolf Rummel speaks of 2,102,000 Armenians (of which, however, 258 thousand lived in the territories of today's Iran, Georgia and Armenia).
Modern Türkiye, as well as Azerbaijan at the state level, do not recognize what happened as genocide. They believe that the death of the Armenians was due to negligence from hunger and disease during the expulsion from the combat zone, was a consequence of the civil war, which also killed many Turks themselves.
The founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, said in 1919: “Whatever happens to non-Muslims in our country, this is a consequence of their barbaric adherence to the policy of separatism, when they became an instrument of external intrigue and abused their rights. These events are far from those forms of oppression that were committed without any justification in the countries of Europe.”
Already in 1994, the doctrine of denial was formulated by the then Prime Minister of Turkey, Tansu Çiller: “It is not true that the Turkish authorities do not want to state their position on the so-called “Armenian issue.” Our position is very clear. Today it is obvious that in the light of historical facts the Armenian claims are unfounded and illusory. In any case, the Armenians were not subjected to genocide.”
The current President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, noted: “We did not commit this crime, we have nothing to apologize for. Who is guilty, he can apologize. However, the Turkish Republic, the Turkish nation has no such problems.” True, on April 23, 2014, speaking in parliament, Erdogan for the first time expressed condolences to the descendants of Armenians who "died during the events of the early twentieth century."
Many international organizations, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and more than 20 countries of the world (including the statement of the Russian State Duma of 1995 “On the condemnation of the genocide of the Armenian people”), about 10 countries at the regional level (for example, 43 from the 50 US states).
In some countries (France, Switzerland), the denial of the Armenian Genocide is considered a criminal offense, several people have already been convicted. As a form of genocide, only Sweden, the Australian state of New South Wales and the American state of New York have so far recognized the killings of Assyrians.
Turkey spends heavily on public relations campaigns and donates to universities whose professors are in a position similar to Turkey's. Critical discussion of the "Kemalist" version of history is considered a crime in Turkey, which makes it difficult to debate in society, although in recent years, intellectuals, the press and civil society have begun to discuss the "Armenian issue". This causes a sharp rejection of the nationalists and the authorities - "dissenting" intellectuals who are trying to apologize to the Armenians are poisoned by all means.
The most famous victims are the Turkish writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature, Orhan Pamuk, forced to live abroad, and the journalist Hrant Dink, a newspaper editor for Turkey's now very small Armenian community, who was killed in 2007 by a Turkish nationalist. His funeral in Istanbul turned into a demonstration where tens of thousands of Turks marched with placards "We are all Armenians, we are all Grants."
Dönme - a crypto-Jewish sect brought Atatürk to power
One of the most destructive factors that largely determines the political situation in the Middle East and Transcaucasia for 100 years is the genocide of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, during which, according to various sources, from 664 thousand to 1.5 million people were killed. And considering that the genocide of the Pontic Greeks, which began in Izmir, was almost simultaneously taking place, during which from 350 thousand to 1.2 million people were destroyed, and the Assyrians, in which the Kurds took part, which claimed from 275 to 750 thousand people, this factor is already For more than 100 years, it has kept the whole region in suspense, constantly fueling enmity between the peoples inhabiting it. Moreover, as soon as even a slight rapprochement between neighbors is planned, giving hope for their reconciliation and further peaceful coexistence, an external factor, a third party, immediately intervenes in the situation, and a bloody event occurs that further warms up mutual hatred.
For an ordinary person who has received a standard education, today it is absolutely obvious that the Armenian genocide took place and that it was Turkey that was to blame for the genocide. Russia, among more than 30 countries, has recognized the fact of the Armenian genocide, which, however, has little effect on its relations with Turkey. Turkey, on the other hand, in the opinion of an ordinary person, absolutely irrationally and stubbornly continues to deny its responsibility not only for the Armenian genocide, but also for the genocide of other Christian peoples - Greeks and Assyrians. According to Turkish media, in May 2018, Turkey opened all its archives to research the events of 1915. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that after the opening of the Turkish archives, if someone dares to declare the "so-called Armenian genocide", then let him try to prove it based on facts:
“In the history of Turkey there was no “genocide” against Armenians” Erdogan said.
No one will dare to suspect the inadequacy of the Turkish president. Erdogan, the leader of a great Islamic country, heir to one of the greatest empires, by definition cannot be like, say, the president of Ukraine. And the president of any country will not dare to go for a frank and open lie. So really, Erdogan knows something that is unknown to most people in other countries, or is carefully hidden from the world community. And such a factor really exists. It does not concern the genocide event itself, it concerns the one who produced this inhuman cruelty and is really responsible for it.
***
In February 2018, on the portal of the Turkish "electronic government" (www.turkiye.gov.tr ) an online service was launched where any citizen of Turkey could trace their genealogy, learn about their ancestors in a few clicks. The records available were limited to the early 19th century, during the Ottoman Empire. The service almost instantly became so popular that it soon collapsed due to millions of requests. The results obtained shocked a huge number of Turks. It turns out that many people who considered themselves Turks, in reality, have ancestors of Armenian, Jewish, Greek, Bulgarian, and even Macedonian and Romanian origin. This fact, by default, only confirmed what everyone in Turkey knows, but no one likes to mention, especially in front of foreigners. Speaking aloud about this in Turkey is considered bad form, but it is this factor that now determines the entire domestic and foreign policy, Erdogan's entire struggle for power within the country.
The Ottoman Empire, by the standards of its time, pursued a relatively tolerant policy towards national and religious minorities, preferring, again, by the standards of that time, non-violent methods of assimilation. To some extent, she repeated the methods of the Byzantine Empire she defeated. The Armenians traditionally led the financial area of the empire. Most of the bankers in Constantinople were Armenians. Very many finance ministers were Armenians, just remember the brilliant Hakob Kazazyan Pasha, who was considered the best finance minister in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Of course, throughout history there have been inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts that have even led to the shedding of blood. But nothing like the genocides of the Christian population in the 20th century happened in the Empire. And suddenly a tragedy happens. Any sane person will understand that out of the blue this does not happen. So why and who carried out these bloody genocides? The answer to this question lies in the history of the Ottoman Empire itself.
***
In Istanbul, in the Asian part of the city across the Bosphorus, there is an old and secluded Uskudar cemetery. Visitors to the cemetery among traditional Muslims will begin to meet and marvel at graves that are unlike others and do not fit into Islamic traditions. Many of the tombs are covered with concrete and stone surfaces rather than earth, and have photographs of the dead, which is not in keeping with tradition. When asked whose graves these are, you will be informed almost in a whisper that representatives of the Donmeh (new converts or apostates - Tour.), a large and mysterious part of Turkish society, are buried here. The grave of a judge of the Supreme Court is located next to the grave of the ex-leader of the Communist Party, and next to them are the graves of a general and a famous educator. The Dönme are Muslims, but not really. Most of today's Dönme are secular people who vote for Atatürk's secular republic, but in every Dönme community, secret religious rites still take place, more Jewish than Islamic. No dönme will ever publicly acknowledge their identity. The dönme themselves only find out about themselves when they reach the age of 18, when their parents reveal the secret to them. This tradition of zealously maintaining dual identities in Muslim society has been passed down for generations.
As I wrote in the article"Island of the Antichrist: a springboard for Armageddon" , Dönme, or Sabbatians are followers and students of the Jewish rabbi Shabbtai Zvi, who in 1665 was proclaimed the Jewish messiah and brought the biggest split in Judaism in almost 2 millennia of its official existence. Avoiding execution by the Sultan, together with his numerous followers, Shabbtai Zvi converted to Islam in 1666. Despite this, many Sabbatians are still members of three religions - Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The Turkish dönme were originally founded in Greek Thessaloniki by Jacob Kerido and his son Berahio (Baruch) Russo (Osman Baba). Subsequently, the dönme spread throughout Turkey, where they were called, depending on the direction in Sabbatianism, izmirlars, karakashlars (black-browed) and kapanjilars (owners of scales). The main place of concentration of the dönme in the Asian part of the Empire was the city of Izmir. The Young Turk movement was largely made up of Dönmeh. Kemal Atatürk, the first President of Turkey, was a Dönmeh and a member of the Veritas Masonic Lodge, a division of the Grand Orient de France lodge.
Throughout their history, the Dönme have repeatedly turned to rabbis, representatives of traditional Judaism, with requests to recognize them as Jews, like the Karaites who deny the Talmud (oral Torah). However, they always received a refusal, which in most cases was of a political nature, not a religious one. Kemalist Turkey has always been an ally of Israel, which was not politically advantageous to admit that this state is actually run by the Jews. For the same reasons, Israel categorically refused and still refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide. Foreign Ministry spokesman Emanuel Nahshon recently said Israel's official position has not changed.
“We are very sensitive and responsive to the terrible tragedy of the Armenian people during the First World War. The historical debate about how to regard this tragedy is one thing, but the recognition that something terrible happened to the Armenian people is quite another, and this is much more important.”
Initially, in the Greek Thessaloniki, which was part of the Ottoman Empire at that time, the Dönme community consisted of 200 families. In secret, they practiced their own form of Judaism, based on the "18 Commandments" supposedly left by Shabbtai Zevi, along with a ban on intermarriages with true Muslims. The Dönme never integrated into Muslim society and continued to believe that Shabbtai Zvi would one day return and lead them to redemption.
According to very low estimates of the dönme themselves, now in Turkey their number is 15-20 thousand people. Alternative sources speak of millions of dönme in Turkey. The entire officer and general staff of the Turkish army, bankers, financiers, judges, journalists, policemen, lawyers, lawyers, preachers throughout the 20th century were dönme. But this phenomenon began in 1891 with the creation of the political organization of the Donme - the Committee "Unity and Progress", later called the "Young Turks", responsible for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the genocide of the Christian peoples of Turkey.
***
In the 19th century, the international Jewish elite planned to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, but the problem was that Palestine was under Ottoman rule. The founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, wanted to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire about Palestine, but failed. Therefore, the next logical step was to take control of the Ottoman Empire itself and destroy it in order to liberate Palestine and create Israel. That is why the Unity and Progress Committee was created under the guise of a secular Turkish nationalist movement. The committee held at least two congresses (in 1902 and 1907) in Paris, at which the revolution was planned and prepared. In 1908, the Young Turks launched their revolution and forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II into submission.
The notorious "evil genius of the Russian revolution" Alexander Parvus was the financial adviser to the Young Turks, and the first Bolshevik government of Russia allocated Ataturk 10 million rubles in gold, 45 thousand rifles and 300 machine guns with ammunition. One of the main, sacred, causes of the Armenian genocide was the fact that the Jews considered Armenians to be Amalekites, descendants of Amalek, the grandson of Esau. Esau himself was the elder twin brother of the founder of Israel, Jacob, who, taking advantage of the blindness of their father, Isaac, stole the birthright from his older brother. Throughout history, the Amalekites were the main enemies of Israel, with whom David fought during the reign of Saul, who was killed by the Amalekite.
The head of the Young Turks was Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), who was a donme and a direct descendant of the Jewish messiah Shabbtai Zvi. The Jewish writer and rabbi Joachim Prinz confirms this fact in his book The secret Jews on page 122:
“The Young Turk uprising in 1908 against the authoritarian regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid began among the intelligentsia of Thessaloniki. It was there that the need for a constitutional regime arose. Among the leaders of the revolution that led to a more modern government in Turkey were Javid Bey and Mustafa Kemal. Both were ardent dönmeh. Javid Bey became finance minister, Mustafa Kemal became the leader of the new regime and took the name Atatürk. His opponents tried to use his dönme affiliation to discredit him, but without success. Too many of the Young Turks in the newly formed revolutionary cabinet prayed to Allah, but their true prophet was Shabbtai Zvi, the Messiah of Smyrna (Izmir - author's note)."
October 14, 1922TheThe Literary Digest published an article titled "The Sort of Mustafa Kemal is" which stated:
"Spanish Jew by birth, orthodox Muslim by birth, trained at a German military college, patriot who studied the campaigns of the world's great generals, including Napoleon, Grant and Lee—these are said to be just a few of the outstanding personality traits of the new Man on Horseback, who appeared in the Middle East. He is a real dictator, correspondents testify, a man of the type who immediately becomes the hope and fear of peoples torn to pieces by unsuccessful wars. Unity and power returned to Turkey largely due to the will of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. Apparently no one has yet called him the "Napoleon of the Middle East", but probably some enterprising journalist will sooner or later; for Kemal's path to power, his methods are autocratic and elaborate, even his military tactics are said to be reminiscent of Napoleon."
In an article entitled "When Kemal Ataturk Recited Shema Yisrael", Jewish author Hillel Halkin quoted Mustafa Kemal Atatürk:
“I am a descendant of Shabbtai Zvi - no longer a Jew, but an ardent admirer of this prophet. I think every Jew in this country would do well to join his camp."
Gershom Scholem wrote in his book "Kabbalah" on pp. 330-331:
“Their liturgies were written in a very small format so that they could be easily hidden. All sects so successfully concealed their internal affairs from Jews and Turks that for a long time knowledge about them was based only on rumors and reports from outsiders. The Dönme manuscripts revealing the details of their Sabbatian ideas were only presented and examined after several Dönme families decided to fully assimilate into Turkish society and handed over their documents to Jewish friends in Thessaloniki and Izmir. As long as the Dönme were concentrated in Thessaloniki, the institutional framework of the sects remained intact, although a few members of the Dönme were active in the Young Turk movement that arose in that city. The first administration that came to power after the Young Turk revolution in 1909 included three Dönme ministers, including Finance Minister Javid Bek, who was a descendant of the Baruch Russo family and was one of the leaders of his sect. One claim commonly made by many of the Jews of Thessaloniki (denied, however, by the Turkish government) was that Kemal Atatürk was of Dönmeh origin. This view was eagerly supported by many of Atatürk's religious opponents in Anatolia.
The Inspector General of the Turkish Army in Armenia and the military governor of the Egyptian Sinai during World War I, Rafael de Nogales, wrote in his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent on pages 26-27 that the chief architect of the Armenian Genocide Osman Talaat (Talaat) was dönme:
“He was a renegade Hebrew (Dönme) from Thessaloniki, Talaat, the main organizer of massacres and deportations, who, fishing in troubled waters, succeeded in a career from a postal clerk humble rank to Grand Vizier of the Empire."
In one of Marcel Tinaire's articles in L "Illustration in December 1923, which was translated into English and published as "Saloniki", it is written:
“Today's Free Masonry-affiliated dönmeh, educated in Western universities, often professing total atheism, have become the leaders of the Young Turk revolution. Talaat Bek, Javid Bek and many other members of the Unity and Progress Committee were donme from Thessaloniki.
The London Times on July 11, 1911, in the article "The Jews and the situation in Albania" wrote:
“It is generally known that under Masonic patronage, the Thessaloniki Committee was formed with the help of the Jews and Dönmeh or Crypto-Jews of Turkey, whose headquarters is in Thessaloniki, and whose organization even under Sultan Abdul Hamid took on a Masonic form. Jews such as Emmanuel Carasso, Salem, Sassoun, Farji, Meslach and Dönme, or crypto-Jews such as Javid Bek and the Balji family, took an influential part both in the organization of the Committee and in the work of its central body in Thessaloniki. These facts, which are known to every government in Europe, are also known throughout Turkey and the Balkans, where there is an increasing trend to hold the Jews and the Dönme responsible for the bloody blunders committed by the Committee».
On August 9, 1911, the same newspaper published a letter to its editors in Constantinople, in which there were comments on the situation from the chief rabbis. In particular, it was written:
“I will simply note that, according to the information that I have received from genuine Freemasons, most of the lodges founded under the auspices of the Grand Orient of Turkey since the Revolution were from the very beginning the face of the Unity and Progress Committee, and they were not then recognized by British Freemasons. . The first "Supreme Council" of Turkey, appointed in 1909, contained three Jews - Caronry, Cohen and Fari, and three Dönme - Djavidaso, Kibarasso and Osman Talaat (the main leader and organizer of the Armenian genocide - author's note)."
To be continued…
Alexander Nikishin For
