Armenian Soldiers Massacre Hundreds of Fleeing Families

 

Azeris hunted down and shot

 

West ignores sufferings of Turks, Muslims

Speaking to Anadolu Agency on massacre and persecution that Muslim Turks faced when they were forced to flee Bulgaria to Turkey during the 1877-78 Russo-Ottoman war, William Holt said the magnitudes of persecution in that period is not sufficiently known either in Turkey or in the international arena.

He said the West deny sufferings of Muslims, adding the reasons behind this are orientalism, hostility towards Turks and Islam, and the Christian lobbies in the West.

Holt went on to say the incidents happened during the war are reflected unilaterally.

The 1877-78 war saw the Ottoman Empire lose territory to Russia in the Caucasus while other Orthodox Christian nations secured independence in the Balkans.    

Muslims who were forced to flee from Bulgaria to Turkey, took refuge in several mosques -- including Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia) -- in Istanbul, the historian noted.

Depicting the stories of immigrants through the painting of a Hungarian painter, he said: "In this painting, you can see the refugees inside the Hagia Sophia. In 1877, there were around 8,000-12,000 refugees in Hagia Sophia for around 4 months. These immigrants were very sick."

Children, elderly men, and women can be seen in the painting, he said, adding this is perhaps a forgotten story of Hagia Sophia. There is a surprising and important story of Hagia Sophia being a refugee shelter.

Also commenting on the 1915 events during the Ottoman era, he noted when the Muslims are oppressed, the West said it is a civil war, but when the Christians are oppressed they call it a “genocide”.

Turkey's position on the events of 1915 is that the deaths of Armenians in eastern Anatolia took place when some sided with invading Russians and revolted against Ottoman forces. A subsequent relocation of Armenians resulted in numerous casualties.

Turkey objects to the presentation of the incidents as "genocide" but describes the 1915 events as a tragedy in which both sides suffered casualties.

Speaking at the event -- entitled the Balkan Losses: Forgotten Immigrants of The Russo-Turkish War -- held by the Turkish Historical Society, Holt said there is a lot of false information about the influence of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, adding Turks have always been depicted as cruel in the West.

“According to the West, the Turks were always cruel and were never oppressed. The West has never seen Turks as victims or oppressed,” he said.

Historian Holt also presented his latest book "The Balkan Reconquista and Turkey's Forgotten Refugee Crisis" at the event.

The book uncovers the difficulties faced by Turks who were forced to migrate during the 1877-78 Russo-Ottoman war. Also, in his book, Holt tells the story of the suffering of Muslims during migration, and what they went through after coming to Istanbul during the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878.

The first to slaughter were the Armenian nationalists

Maxime Gauin:

The first to slaughter were the Armenian nationalists, between November 1914 and April 1915. This is an excuse for nothing, this is a fact. Sean McMeekin, “The Russian Origins of the First World War”, Cambridge (MA)-London: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Michael A. Reynolds, “Shattering Empires. The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918”, Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Muslims Massacred by Armenians in Rawanduz

 

Kurds Massacred by Armenians

Jeremy Salt, "The Unmaking of the Middle East," Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 2008, p. 67:

(Source: Maxime Gauin)

Bernard Lewis on the Armenian Question

Bernard Lewis, Notes on a Century. Reflections of a Middle East Historian, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012, pp. 287-288:

“My point was that while the Armenians suffered appalling losses, the comparison with the Holocaust was misleading. The one arose from an armed rebellion, from what we would nowadays call a national liberation struggle. The Armenians, seizing the opportunity presented by World War I, overlords in alliance with Britain and Russia, the two powers with which Turkey was at war. The rebellions of the Armenians in the east and in Cilicia achieved some initial successes but were eventually suppressed, and the surviving Armenians from Cilicia were ordered to be exiled. During the struggle and the subsequent deportation, great numbers of Armenians were killed.

The slaughter of the Jews, first in Germany and then in German occupied Europe, was a different matter. There was no rebellion, armed or otherwise. On the contrary, the German Jews were intensely loyal to their country. The attack on them was defined wholly and solely by their alleged racial identity and included converted Jews and people of partly Jewish descent. It was not local or regional, but was extended to all the Jews under German rule or occupation, and its purpose was to achieve their total annihilation.

When the survivors of the Armenian deportation arrived at their destinations in Ottoman-ruled Iraq and Palestine they were welcomed and helped by the local Armenian communities. The German Jews deported to Poland by the Nazis received no such help, but joined their Polish coreligionists in a common fate.

The first difference was thus that some of the Armenians were involved in an armed rebellion; the Jews were not, but were attacked solely because of their identity. A second difference was that the persecution of Armenians was mostly confined to endangered areas, while the Armenian populations in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, notably in big cities, were left more or less unharmed. I say “more or less” because there were some attacks on individual Armenians accused of anti-Ottoman acts, but the Armenian populations in general were not persecuted.”

(Source: Maxime Gauin's blog)