49
Along with the Young Turk's newfound "Turanism" there was a dramatic rise in Islamic
fundamentalist agitation throughout Turkey. Christian Armenians were once again
branded as infidels (non-believers in Islam). Young Islamic extremists, sometimes
leading to violence, staged anti-Armenian demonstrations. During one such outbreak in
1909, two hundred villages were plundered and over 30,000 persons massacred in the
Cilicia district on the Mediterranean coast. Throughout Turkey, sporadic local attacks
against Armenians continued unchecked over the next several years.
There were also big cultural differences between Armenians and Turks. The Armenians
had always been one of the best-educated communities within the old Turkish Empire.
Armenians were the professionals in society, the businessmen, lawyers, doctors and
skilled craftsmen. And they were more open to new scientific, political and social ideas
from the West (Europe and America). Children of wealthy Armenians went to Paris,
Geneva or even to America to complete their education.
By contrast, the majority of Turks were illiterate peasant farmers and small shopkeepers.
Leaders of the Ottoman Empire had traditionally placed little value on education and not
a single institute of higher learning could be found within their old empire. The various
autocratic and despotic rulers throughout the empire's history had valued loyalty and
blind obedience above all. Their uneducated subjects had never heard of democracy or
liberalism and thus had no inclination toward political reform. But this was not the case
with the better-educated Armenians who sought political and social reforms that would
improve life for themselves and Turkey's other minorities.
The Young Turks decided to glorify the virtues of simple Turkish peasantry at the expense
of the Armenians in order to capture peasant loyalty. They exploited the religious,
cultural, economic and political differences between Turks and Armenians so that the
average Turk came to regard Armenians as strangers among them.
When World War I broke out in 1914, leaders of the Young Turk regime sided with the
Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). The outbreak of war would provide the
perfect opportunity to solve the "Armenian question" once and for all. The world's
attention became fixed upon the battlegrounds of France and Belgium where the young
men of Europe were soon falling dead by the hundreds of thousands. The Eastern Front
eventually included the border between Turkey and Russia. With war at hand, unusual
measures involving the civilian population would not seem too out of the ordinary.
As a prelude to the coming action, Turks disarmed the entire Armenian population under
the pretext that the people were naturally sympathetic toward Christian Russia. Every
last rifle and pistol was forcibly seized, with severe penalties for anyone who failed to
turn in a weapon. Quite a few Armenian men actually purchased a weapon from local
Turks or Kurds (nomadic Muslim tribesmen) at very high prices so they would have
something to turn in.
At this time, about forty thousand Armenian men were serving in the Turkish Army. In
the fall and winter of 1914, all of their weapons were confiscated and they were put into
slave labour battalions building roads or were used as human pack animals. Under the
brutal work conditions they suffered a very high death rate. Those who survived would
soon be shot outright. For the time had come to move against the Armenians.
The decision to annihilate the entire population came directly from the ruling triumvirate
of ultra-nationalist Young Turks. The actual extermination orders were transmitted in
coded telegrams to all provincial governors throughout Turkey. Armed roundups began on
the evening of April 24, 1915, as 300 Armenian political leaders, educators, writers,
clergy and dignitaries in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were taken from their
homes, briefly jailed and tortured, then hanged or shot.
48
Next, there were mass arrests of Armenian men throughout the country by Turkish
soldiers, police agents and bands of Turkish volunteers. The men were tied together with
ropes in small groups then taken to the outskirts of their town and shot dead or
bayoneted by death squads. Local Turks and Kurds armed with knives and sticks often
joined in on the killing.
Then it was the turn of Armenian women, children, and the elderly. On very short notice,
they were ordered to pack a few belongings and be ready to leave home, under the
pretext that they were being relocated to a non-military zone for their own safety. They
were actually being taken on death marches heading south toward the Syrian Desert.
Muslim Turks who assumed instant ownership of everything quickly occupied most of the
homes and villages left behind by the rousted Armenians. In many cases, local Turks who
took them from their families spared young Armenian children from deportation. The
children were coerced into denouncing Christianity and becoming Muslims, and were then
given new Turkish names. For Armenian boys the forced conversion meant they each had
to endure painful circumcision as required by Islamic custom.
Turkish gendarmes escorted individual caravans consisting of thousands of deported
Armenians. These guards allowed roving government units of hardened criminals known
as the "Special Organisation" to attack the defenceless people, killing anyone they
pleased. They also encouraged Kurdish bandits to raid the caravans and steal anything
they wanted. In addition, an extraordinary amount of sexual abuse and rape of girls and
young women occurred at the hands of the Special Organisation and Kurdish bandits.
Most of the attractive young females were kidnapped for a life of involuntary servitude.
The death marches during the Armenian Genocide, involving over a million Armenians,
covered hundreds of miles and lasted months. Indirect routes through mountains and
wilderness areas were deliberately chosen in order to prolong the ordeal and to keep the
caravans away from Turkish villages.
Food supplies being carried by the people quickly ran out and they were usually denied
further food or water. Anyone stopping to rest or lagging behind the caravan was
mercilessly beaten until they rejoined the march. If they couldn't continue they were
shot. A common practice was to force all of the people in the caravan to remove every
stitch of clothing and have them resume the march in the nude under the scorching sun
until they dropped dead by the roadside from exhaustion and dehydration.
An estimated 75 percent of the Armenians on these marches perished, especially children
and the elderly. Those who survived the ordeal were herded into the desert without a
drop of water. Being thrown off cliffs, burned alive, or drowned in rivers.
During the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish countryside became littered with
decomposing corpses. At one point, Mehmed Talaat responded to the problem by sending
a coded message to all provincial leaders: "I have been advised that in certain areas
unburied corpses are still to be seen. I ask you to issue the strictest instructions so that
the corpses and their debris in your vilayet are buried."
But his instructions were generally ignored. Those involved in the mass murder showed
little interest in stopping to dig graves. The roadside corpses and emaciated deportees
were a shocking sight to foreigners working in Turkey. Eyewitnesses included German
government liaisons, American missionaries, and U.S. diplomats stationed in the country.
During the Armenian Genocide, the Christian missionaries were often threatened with
death and were unable to help the people. Diplomats from the still neutral United States
communicated their blunt assessments of the ongoing government actions. U.S.
ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, reported to Washington: "When the Turkish
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47
authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death
warrant to a whole race..."
The Allied Powers (Great Britain, France and Russia) responded to news of the massacres
by issuing a warning to Turkey: "...the Allied governments announce publicly...that they
will hold all the members of the Ottoman Government, as well as such of their agents as
are implicated, personally responsible for such matters."
The warning had no effect. Newspapers in the West including the New York Times
published reports of the continuing deportations with the headlines: Armenians Are Sent
to Perish in the Desert - Turks Accused of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population (August
18, 1915) - Million Armenians Killed or in Exile - American Committee on Relief Says
Victims of Turks Are Steadily Increasing - Policy of Extermination (December 15, 1915).
Temporary relief for some Armenians came as Russian troops attacked along the Eastern
Front and made their way into central Turkey. But the troops withdrew in 1917 upon the
Russian Revolution. Armenian survivors withdrew along with them and settled in among
fellow Armenians already living in provinces of the former Russian Empire. There were in
total about 500,000 Armenians gathered in this region.
In May 1918, Turkish armies attacked the area to achieve the goal of expanding Turkey
eastward into the Caucasus and also to resume the annihilation of the Armenians. As
many as 100,000 Armenians may have fallen victim to the advancing Turkish troops.
However, the Armenians managed to acquire weapons and they fought back, finally
repelling the Turkish invasion at the battle of Sardarabad, thus saving the remaining
population from total extermination with no help from the outside world. Following that
victory, Armenian leaders declared the establishment of the independent Republic of
Armenia.
World War I ended in November 1918 with a defeat for Germany and the Central Powers
including Turkey. Shortly before the war had ended, the Young Turk triumvirate; Talaat,
Enver and Djemal, abruptly resigned their government posts and fled to Germany where
they had been offered asylum.
In the months that followed, repeated requests by Turkey’s new moderate government
and the Allies were made asking Germany to send the Young Turks back home to stand
trial. However all such requests were turned down. As a result, Armenian activists took
matters into their own hands, located the Young Turks and assassinated them along with
two other instigators of the mass murder.
Meanwhile, representatives from the fledgling Republic of Armenia attended the Paris
Peace Conference in the hope that the victorious Allies would give them back their
historic lands seized by Turkey. The European Allies responded to their request by asked
the United States to assume guardianship of the new Republic. However, President
Woodrow Wilson's attempt to make Armenia an official U.S. protectorate was rejected by
the U.S. Congress in May 1920.
But Wilson did not give up on Armenia. As a result of his efforts, the Treaty of Sevres was
signed on August 10, 1920 by the Allied Powers, the Republic of Armenia, and the new
moderate leaders of Turkey. The treaty recognised an independent Armenian state in an
area comprising much of the former historic homeland.
However, Turkish nationalism once again reared its head. The moderate Turkish leaders
who signed the treaty were ousted in favour of a new nationalist leader, Mustafa Kemal,
who simply refused to accept the treaty and even re-occupied the very lands in question
then expelled any surviving Armenians, including thousands of orphans.
39
No Allied power came to the aid of the Armenian Republic and it collapsed. Only a tiny
portion of the easternmost area of historic Armenia survived by being becoming part of
the Soviet Union.
After the successful obliteration of the people of historic Armenia during the Armenian
Genocide, the Turks demolished any remnants of Armenian cultural heritage including
priceless masterpieces of ancient architecture, old libraries and archives. The Turks even
leveled entire cities such as the once thriving Kharpert, Van and the ancient capital at
Ani, to remove all traces of the three thousand year old civilisation.
Referring to the Armenian Genocide, the young German politician Adolf Hitler duly noted
the half-hearted reaction of the world’s great powers to the plight of the Armenians. After
achieving total power in Germany, Hitler decided to conquer Poland in 1939 and told his
generals: "Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my 'Death's Head Units'
with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race
or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks
nowadays about the Armenians?"
Source:
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/armenian_genocide.htm
Armenian Genocide - Quotes
Talat Pasha: 6/1/1915 – “Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly
liquidate (grundlich aufzaumen) its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without
being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.”
“What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians.”
Jemal Pasha: “800 000 Armenian deportees were actually killed... by holding the guilty
accountable the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past.” I am ashamed of my
nation”
Enver Pasha: 5/19/1916 – “The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the
Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall
destroy the latter through starvation.”
“You are greatly mistaken. We have this country absolutely under our control. I have no
desire to shift the blame onto our underlings and I am entirely willing to accept the
responsibility myself for everything that has taken place.”
Prince Abdul Mecid: I refer to those awful massacres. They are the greatest stain that
has ever disgraced our nation and race. They were entirely the work of Talat and Enver. I
heard some days before they began that they were intended..
“I went to Istanbul and insisted on seeing Enver. I asked him if it was true that they
intended to recommence the massacres which had been our shame and disgrace under
Abdul Hamid. The only reply I could get from him was: It is decided: It is the program.”
Damad Ferid Pasha: He described the treatment of the Armenians as; “A crime that
drew the revulsion of the entire humankind.”
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46
Mustafa Arif: 12/13/1918 – “Surely a few Armenians aided and abetted our enemy,
and a few Armenian Deputies committed crimes against the Turkish nation... it is
incumbent upon a government to pursue the guilty ones. Unfortunately, our wartime
leaders, imbued with a spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a
manner that could surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided
to exterminate the Armenians, and they did exterminate them.”
Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk”: 8/1/1926 – “These left-over from the former Young Turk
Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects
who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been
restive under the Republican rule.”
German Quotes:
Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim: 6/17/1915 – Deportation of the Armenians from
their homes in the vilayets of Eastern Anatolia, and their resettlement in other regions is
implemented cruelly... it becomes obvious that deportation of the Armenians arises not
only from military necessity, the internal minister Talat Bey told about it honestly to
Doctor Mortsman, who is employed at the Empire Embassy now. Talat said: “The Sublime
Porte intends to make use of the world war for cleaning the whole country from internal
enemies, the local Christians, so that foreign countries won’t hinder doing it by their
diplomatic interference. This measure will serve to the interests of all allies of Turkey,
especially the Germans...”
Count Wolff-Metternich: 7/10/1916 – “In its attempt to carry out its purpose to
resolve the Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenian race, the Turkish
government has refused to be deterred neither by our representations, nor by those of
the American Embassy, nor by the delegate of the Pope, nor by the threats of the Allied
Powers, nor in deference to the public opinion of the West representing one-half of the
world.”
Adolf Hitler: 8/2/1939 – “I have placed my death-head formations in readiness – for
the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and
without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only
thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks
today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
British Quotes:
Viscount James Bryce: 10/6/1915 – “The massacres are the result of a policy which,
as far as can be ascertained, has been entertained for some considerable time by the
gang of unscrupulous adventurers who are now in possession of the Government of the
Turkish Empire. They hesitated to put it in practice until they thought the favourable
moment had come, and that moment seems to have arrived about the month of April.”
Viscount James Bryce: 5/11/1918 – “The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime
of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it... ...the failure to deal
radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of
the world is mischievous nonsense.”
Lord Robert Cecil: 11/16/1915 – “I think it may be said, without the least fear of
exaggeration, that no more horrible crime has been committed in the history of the
world. This is a premeditative crime determined on long ago. It was a long-considered,
deliberate policy to destroy and wipe out of existence the Armenians in Turkey. It was
systematically carried out. It was ordered from the above..”
36
Winston Chuchill: “In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out
the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor. There is no
reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons.”
American Quotes:
Henry Morgenthau Sr.: 1/1/1919 – “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for
these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they
understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular
attempt to conceal the fact. I am confident that the whole history of the human race
contains no such horrible episode as this. The gr6eat massacres and persecutions of the
past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in
1915.”
Ronald Reagan: 4/22/1981 – “Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the
genocide of the Cambodians which followed it, ... the lessons of the Holocaust must
never be forgotten.”
Russian Quotes:
S. D. Sazonov: I had to refer to the unprecedented sufferings of this unfortunate nation
before. Under the favourable control of the allied Germany, the Turks evidently intend to
fulfil their long-standing dream to exterminate the Armenians which do not submit to the
influence of the Muslims and the hinder the plans of Germany to subdue the Turkish
Empire in economy and politics...
Envoy Smirnov from Cairo: 6/25/1915 – “Cruelties committed against the Armenians
in Syria and neighbouring vilayets, violations, massacres and very often mass slaughter
of the population of the Armenian villages are constantly repeated; families are cruelly
separated, wives are separated from husbands, children are separated from parents, and
all of them are exiled in various directions. Especially the Armenian clergy are pursued
cruelly; the priests are haunted, tortured, their nails are pulled out.”
Israeli Quotes:
Yossi Beilin: 4/27/1994 – “It was not war. It was most certainly massacre and
genocide, something the world must remember... We will always reject any attempt to
erase its record, even for some political advantage.”
Other Quotes:
Valery Brusov: 1916 – “Turks continued their previous policy. They would not stop to
commit massive and most awful massacres that even Leng Timur would not dare to do.”
Prof. Stanley Cohen: 12/1/1995 – “The nearest successful example (of collective
denial) in the modern era is the 80 years of official denial by successive Turkish
governments of the 1915-17 genocide against the Armenians in which 1,5 million people
42
lost their lives. This denial has been sustained by deliberate propaganda, lying and cover-
ups, forging documents, suppression of archives, and bribing scholars.”
Prof. Colin Tatz: 1/1/1996 – “The Turkish denial (of the Armenian Genocide) is
probably the foremost example of historical perversion. With a mix of academic
sophistication and diplomatic thuggery of which we at Macquarie University have been
targets, the Turks have put both memory and history into reverse gear.”
Orhan Pamuk: Feb/2005 – “ one million Armenians were killed in these lands and
nobody but me dares to talk about it.”
Rep. Adam Schiff: 2007 – “The legacy of the Armenian Genocide is woven into the
fabric of America. So let us call genocide, genocide. Let us not minimise the deliberate
murder of 1,5 million people. Let us have a moral victory that can shine as a light to all
nations.”
The Muslim world along with the US and UK does not recognise these atrocities
as a Genocide
Although there has been much academic recognition of the Armenian Genocide, this has
far from always been followed by governments and media.
Despite Turkish denials and blackmail, the Armenian Genocide is unanimously verified by
the International Association of Genocide Scholars and accepted by any nation that
upholds moral responsibility above political gain.
Even today, the United States, Great Britain, Turkey and the rest of the Muslim World
have refused to recognise the Armenian Genocide.
Obviously, Muslim countries will rarely condemn state or small scale Jihad but it’s very
apparent what kind of nobleness, loyalty and ethics the British and US government value
and have done continuously throughout the 1900
th
century (only driven by self interest).
It should be noted though that the American people through their representatives on
state level have made a lot more effort in condemning this as Genocide (40 out of 50
states).
Source: Hay Brountsk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx1M82JsbbQ
Greek Jihadi Genocide 1914-23
During the years 1914-1923, whilst the attention of the international community focused
on the turmoil and aftermath of the First World War, the indigenous Greek minority of the
Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey's predecessor, was subjected to a centrally-
organised, premeditated and systematic policy of annihilation. This genocide,
orchestrated to ensure an irreversible end to the collective existence of Turkey's Greek
population, was perpetrated by two consecutive governments; the Committee for Union
and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, and the nationalist Kemalists led by
Mustafa Kemal "Atatürk". A lethal combination of internal deportations involving death
marches, forced conversions to Islam, torture, mutilation, rape, enslavement and
massacres conducted throughout Ottoman Turkey resulted in the death of one million
43
Ottoman Greeks. The International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organisation of
the world’s foremost experts on genocide, have affirmed the Ottoman Greek Genocide.
Many of the victims were massacred in bulks as early as 1895 (much earlier than the
World War I) and up to 1955 (much after the World War II). The present estimate is that
some 1.400.000 Greek children, men and women of all ages were killed during that
period.
In the same places and often at the same time, the Turks tortured and massacred
millions of Armenians and Assyrians of all ages. The fact that the three nations were
victims of the same Jihadi extermination policy is another proof of each of the three
Genocides. It was not a "war", it was not a "revolt". It was a planned effort of
extermination.[1][2]
Dr. William C. King's article "1,500,000 Greek Christians Massacred or Deported by
Turks", published in King's Complete History of the World War (1922), covers the
genocidal experiences of Ottoman Greeks up to 1918:
The article[3]:
1,500,000 Greek Christians Massacred or Deported by Turks
Systematic Attempt to Extinguish the Hellenic Race Inspired by Pagan Germany
Section 19- 1918
Under the tuition of pagan Germany, the unspeakable Turks attempted to destroy
the large and flourishing Greek Christian populations that, from time immemorial,
have dwelt along the coast of Asia Minor and the Marmoran coast in Thrace.
The Mahometans (Muslims) tore these Christians from their ancestral homes,
confiscated all their property, and deported them variously into the interior of the
Asia Minor, into the Turkish pale, or over the burning desert sands to far off
Mesopotmaia. It is estimated that 1,500,000 Greeks were thus deported into
desolate regions where they died off like flies of starvation of disease.
On this dreadful journey 700,000 are known to have perished. The survivors
found themselves without shelter or food in a strange land and subjected to every
indignity and torture which the abominable Turks, and their pagan German allies,
could devise. These among the Greeks who would agree to abjure
Christianity and adopt the faith of Islam were spared [My emphasis]; the
rest were left to starve.
The wholesale deportation of the Greeks from Thrace had been under way since
the close of the Balkan Wars in 1913. It accorded not at all with Germany’s ideas
of Oriental conquest to permit these Greeks to remain in European Turkey. The
Turks were consequently instructed to extirpate the Greeks in any way they might
choose.
In justification of these wholesale deportations, the Turks falsely alleged that the
Hellenic populations of Thrace and the Asian coast were plotting revolution. The
first deportations, numbering 250,000, were from Thrace into Greece proper. This
persecution continued unabated up to the opening of the War. In this period the
Greek Government did everything possible to protect their co-nationals, but after
the World War had begun, King Constantine and his German wive (the sister of
44
Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany), impeded every attempt made to ameliorate the lot of
the exiled Hellenes. The bishop of Pera, after journeying to Athens to implore the
King to take some action against the Turkish atrocities, was warned by the Queen
to return to his home, “as it is the will of the King that you live on good terms with
the Turks.”
All this time the German agencies in Turkey, especially the German Palestine
Bank, were urging the Mussulmans to cultivate hatred for the Christians and to
have no commercial dealings with them.
The Bulgarian-Ottoman(Turkish) Plot
Bulgaria, half Turkish itself, entered into the plot to exterminate the Greek
Christian race, by signing a pact with the Ottoman Empire, at Adrianople in June,
1915. Under this agreement Bulgaria consented (1) to the establishment of a
Turco-Bulgar commercial union as the complement of the political union, (2) the
seizure of the commerce of the Orient from the hands of the Greeks, (3) the
establishment in the Orient of Moslem agencies for the importation and
exportation of goods for the exclusive use of Moslems, who were to break of all
commercial relations with the Greeks, (4) a restriction of the privileges of the
Greek Patriarch and his ecclesiastical jurisdiction, (5) the prohibition of the
teaching of Greek in future, (6) the conversion by force of the people in the
Christian settlements and the imposition of mixed marriages. [My
emphasis]
Germany the Author of the Massacres
Herr Lepsius, a German Envoy who had been sent to Constantinople on a special
mission in July, 1915, acknowledged that the Greek and Armenian massacres
were two phases of a single progra66m of extermination of the Christian
elements, intended to make Turkey a purely Moslem state.
That Germany was the author and inspiration of these massacres of Christians
became known in 1917. The Greek Minister at Constantinople, M. Kallerghis, had
protested the Turkish Grand Vizier, Talaat Bey, against the deportations of the
Greeks in the Aival district. Talaat Bey promised to telegraph to the German
General Liman von Sanders, telling him to cease the deportations. Von Sanders,
who was in fact Commander-in-Chief of all the Turkish forces, replied that if the
deportations ceased, he would not guarantee the safety of the Turkish Army,
adding that the had referred the matter to the German Grand Headquarters Staff,
who entirely approved of his action.
Greeks Drafted into the Turkish Army
The persecution of the Greek Christians, under their German-Turkish master, was
carried out with devilish ingenuity. All their privileges were abolished. After an
enrollmment of Christians, there was a levy of “contributions”. Then the forcible
conversion of Christians to Islamism was attempted. Deportations and massacres
followed. Meanwhile the Turkish language supplanted the Greek language in all
the schools; Turkish geography and history, instead of Greek, were taught; the
Patriarchy was abolished. All property held by the Greek civil and religious
communities were confiscated and became the property of the Turkish State.
45
On Turkey’s entry into the War, a decree was signed and promulgated which
rendered all men up to the age of 48 liable for military service. The Christians
ghus drafted into the armies of the Turks were for the most part formed into
labour battalions and sent hundreds of miles into the interior, where they
employed in road-making, building, tunnel excavating and in field work for the
rich pashas. Their daily ration was half a loaf of black bread, eked out with a little
dried fish or olives. Driven like slaves and under-nourished, they died by tens of
thousands. Whole battalions succumbed to the ravages of typhus and cholera.
Many thousands were massacred by their inhuman Turkish guards. Of these Greek
battalions it is estimated 150,000 died.
Fortunes of Christians Confiscated
Some hundreds of thousands of Hellenes from Thrace and Asia Minor managed to
escape into Greece, where they subsequently fought in the Greek armies. Their
desertion was the signal for other Turkish atrocities. The property of all deserters
was duly seized and families were deported to the interior. In the district of
Kerassunda, from which 300 Greeks had escaped, the Turks in reprisal burned 88
villages to the ground. Thirty thousand inhabitants, mostly women and children,
were obliged to march in mid-winter to Angora. On the way, 7,000 died of
exposure.
Meanwhile, the fortunes of many rich Christian were confiscated, and stores were
completely pillaged. Christians were forced under threats of violence and
imprisonment, to contribute large sums for the support of the Turkish Army and
Navy, in addition to their usual heavy taxes.
Finally, under a system of compulsory labour, the Christians were obliged to
cultivate the lands of the Moslems, but no time was allowed them to cultivate their
own fields. If discovered harvesting their own crops a cordon would be placed
around the village, the water supply cut off and the people were deprived of food
and drink.
After a few days of such torture, a band of Bashi-Bazouks were sent into the
villages to pillage and murder. The populations were given the choice of being
deported over the mountains, to places hundreds of miles distant, or of suffering a
lingering death from hunger and thirst. These deportations, begun in 1915,
reached a total of 450,000 during the period of the War.
During these tragic pilgrimages the poor barefooted Greeks, beaten by guards,
attacked by brigands, never resting, lacking food and water, wandered on to their
distant destinations. Thousands died by the wayside of fatigue and suffering.
While in transit, many mothers gave birth to infants, but they were compelled to
leave them by the road-side and rejoin the marching columns. En route they were
forbidden to enter the villages to purchase food.
Hundreds of young girls were detained by the Turks and forcibly
“converted” to Islamism. At Panderma, the German General, Liman von
Sanders, built an orphanage for all Christian girls who had been coerced
into accepting Islam, and compelled the Christian population to
contribute $50,000 toward its support. [My emphasis]
The Black Sea Colonies
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