The Christian tragedy in the Middle East did not begin with Isis

 

1. Never thought I’d see a column by the dread, dumb Robert Fisk featured here in a non-targeted way. I guess a broken clock can be right once or twice?

   But in many ways, what Fisk says is more true than he knows. Just like the persecution of the Middle East’s Christians did not start with IS, the Armenian Genocide did not start in 1915, and the crimes of the late Ottoman Empire was not limited to them. It is not the 100th anniversary of the genocide. It is more like the 125th. Because it began in the 1890’s.

   While the Ottoman Empire’s behavior towards revolts, minorities, and revolts by minorities was always brutal that had started to bite them in the rear. In the 1870’s Turkey’s own (non-genocidal but still barbaric and bloody) attempts to repress nationalism in the parts of the Balkans it still held resulted in its’ Western Allies withdrawing support and the Russians forming a pan-Balkan alliance that kicked the Turks out. In turn, the Russians and the locals took their own turn slaughtering those they didn’t like, such as nearly exterminating Bulgaria’s local Turkish population.

   It was this catastrophe- that had the Russian Army in Constantinople’s suburbs, hundreds of thousands of Turco/Muslim refugees pouring into an enraged Anatolia, and people like the Armenians trying to advocate for more rights (and a few hotheads saying independence)- that Sultan Abdul Hamid took stock of. And what were the lessons that Abdul Hamid II took from the defeat in 1878; the importance of keeping international support? The importance of reform in the military and civil sector? The necessity to win over the Empire’s minorities?

   No, don’t be silly. He decided that since the plight of Christian minorities had led to intervention from outside and agitation within, it would be better to remove the Christian minorities from existence. Permanently. So he got to work in 1894 on the Armenian towns that showed the most independence thanks to the Russian interventions in 1877, and it went from there.

   And through the next 26 years and at least three distinct regimes, the Turkish state pursued a policy of genocide against the non-Muslim, non-Turkish populations in it’ borders (and often plenty of more oppression elsewhere). They did not just target Armenians, but also Greeks, Assyro-Chaldeans, Bahai, and to a far lesser extent Jews. 1915 did not mark the start, but merely an acceleration when another Turkish defeat against Russia in the Caucasus made a hunt for scapegoats to excuse terminal stupidity from up high.

   This is something that Turkey was never fully punished for, and in fact still denies any of this happened; the Turkish government of today is still heir to one that came to power under Kemal Mufasta with the intent of undoing the peace treaty of WWI and more or less getting away from responsibility .Which I think is one reason why stuff like this happens. Nobody has been made to pay for it.

   Has anybody asked what the world and international norms might be like if the Nazis killed all their millions of Jews, Slavs, Romani, etc. and Got Away With It? If the modern German government criminalized accepting the Holocaust?

   That’s why I think Fisk is still short sighted, and why Obama’s “people like this ultimately fail” is so unconvincing. People like this HAVE ALREADY DONE IT. They DID succeed. One of them is still venerated today with the honorific of “Father of the Turks.”

   And what does the world say?

   Posted by Turtler       04/06/2015  at  04:08 PM  

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