|
The following is a typical story, circulated in
prestigious newspapers such as The New York Times.
No wonder Turks have a bad reputation to this day in the West... such
incredible tales of horror no doubt have had a potent, cumulative effect.
|
|
|
A
TYPICAL NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF THE ARMENIAN “GENOCIDE” |
From an Armenian web site;
excerpts from perhaps the most reputable newspaper in the United States, The New York
Times:
JUNE 7, 1919 (subtitled:) 70% OF ARMENIANS KILLED
The Rev. Paul F. B. Chappell of Nashville, Tenn., told the correspondent of what he had
seen in traveling from Port Said to Aleppo.
"Poverty is most profound, although the prospects for the next harvest are
good," he said. "Even at the present time the people fall dead in the streets
from the effects of Turkish treatment. The Turks could not invade Syria as they invaded
Armenia, but they were successful in preventing food from going to Syria. Starvation is
wide-spread throughout the region
------------
A large number of photographs taken in Armenia, showing piles of skulls and skeletons and
pictures of deformed children and tortured women were shown the correspondent by the Rev.
Samuel T. Bartlett of Toronto, a member of the committee who penetrated into Eastern
Turkey.
"At Ourfa," Mr. Bartlett said, "I saw a deep well filled with skulls of
dead Armenians. There must have been several thousand of them. At Malatee there is a pit
containing thousands of skeletons. A little girl at Sivas told us the Turks had taken her
father and other men, tied and tortured them and then killed them.
"The Turks also took all the babies in the town and threw them into the river until it overflowed its
banks. They let out the priests, put red-hot iron shoes on their feet, tied them to wagons
and forced them to walk long distances. The finger and toe nails of the priests were
pulled out, and the priests finally were compelled to say the rites over the dead, while
the Turks looked on and laughed and mocked. At other places they pulled out the beards of
the priest and tortured them until they fell dead from exhaustion. It was a tale of bloody
butchery that we heard."
Mr. Bartlett said that the committee traveled across Central Asia Minor from Aleppo to
Samsun to Constantinople they were the guests of Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, the
American commander in Turkish waters, on the Destroyer 149.
Such lively imaginations must have come in handy for the priests of The
Spanish Inquisition, to cook up their exquisite tortures
|
Holdwater would like to make
three comments.
1) Regarding Rev. Paul F. B. Chappell’s opinion ("The
Turks could not invade Syria as they invaded Armenia"): This account
is from 1919, after Syria was no longer an Ottoman territory... under British rule,
if I’m not mistaken. So, if he means the Turks were in no position to challenge
the British by invading Syria, he would be correct... certainly, the Turks had other
things on their minds, with Istanbul under Allied occupation, pulling the strings of
the official Ottoman puppet government... while the Allies were conspiring to divvy
up the devastated empire to leave only what would amount to an Indian reservation
for the Turks. As Turkey demonstrated after Ataturk eventually kicked out all
invading forces, the nation had no interest in territorial expansion. So this man of
God is already demonstrating his bias.
As far as invading “Armenia,” if he’s referring to re-conquered Turkish lands
where the Turks had been living for the last thousand years or so, he was entitled
to his opinion.... but again shows his bias. If Turkey was the cruel and barbarous
invading aggressor as he’s attempting to portray, no doubt what is now Armenia
could have been conquered, as well. (When Armenia was briefly a nation, before
hooking up with The Soviet Union... since the well-armed [by the Brits] Armenian
soldiers were too cowardly to put
up any fight, Turkey could have rolled over Armenia during this period, if she
were truly expansion-oriented.)
Starvation was widespread everywhere. I don’t know what food he’s referring to
that was prevented from going into Syria... is it food that was grown in Turkey that
Turkey didn’t allow to be exported? Whatever little food existed was needed to
feed the Turks themselves, in their desperate life and death struggle. Is it food
that Christian charitable organizations brought in strictly to take care of the
Armenians, with the Near East Relief Fund? So far, I’ve come across no report
suggesting the Turks impeded in any way the efforts of these Christian
charities. In fact, it's amazing the government allowed these charities to
operate during wartime, when their participants were extremely unfriendly to the
Turks.
2) Regarding the good Reverend Samuel T. Bartlett’s account... of course, Greeks,
Armenians and others who have made Turk-hating a reason for their existence would
jump up and down in ecstasy over such a description... coming from a “moral” man
of God, who MUST have been telling the truth. However, if you are a reader whose
mind has not been hopelessly poisoned with vicious anti-Turkish propaganda, think
about the scene described.
The described scene is of such unimaginable, ghastly horror, it makes the Marquis de
Sade come across like Joan of Arc.
”The Turks also took all the babies in
the town and threw them into the river until it overflowed its banks.” For the love of the Gods! How many babies
would it take to overflow the banks of a river? Was this a town, or a small nation?
I’m now reminded of the story that was widely circulated in America, before the
first Gulf War got underway. Iraqi soldiers went into a Kuwaiti hospital and threw
babies away, after removing them from their incubators. After the war, the story was
revealed to have been cooked up by Kuwaitis living in America. However, the story
did its job... if we weren’t already justly convinced the Iraqis did a wrongful
thing with their invasion, now we knew they were utter monsters, and it was our duty
to give them their due.
I wonder where the Turks got these convenient “red-hot
iron shoes”? Here they were, going off to slaughter a town of
innocent Armenians with their government-issued genocidal orders... I guess they
just decided to have a little sadistic fun by ordering a few of these iron shoes
from the iron shoemaker. (Of course, then they would need to take the trouble of
building a fire in order to heat these iron shoes. I guess a lot of these stupid
Turks’ hands got pretty burnt while slipping the red hot iron shoes onto the feet
of the priests... who probably already died just from the shocking thought of what
was to occur.)
As far as running into thousands of skeletons and skulls no matter which way they
turned... well. Let’s concentrate on the thousands of skulls that were thrown into
the well, That’s a lot of work. As if it wasn’t already a big enough job to
murder thousands of people... why would these soldiers (I’d imagine this is what
the reverend would prefer for us to believe) take the time to behead their thousands
of victims, and throw the heads into the well? I’ve never beheaded anyone, mind
you, but I’ve seen enough Mafia movies to know the amputation of bodily parts is
time-consuming and pretty disgusting work. Maybe these soldiers took big heavy axes
with them (along with the iron boots) to do the job as quickly as possible, but
remember.... we’re talking thousands of beheadings. Even if the Turks had this
psychotic blind hatred of Christians to add the final insult to the fatal injuries
of their victims, I’d think the hatred would start cooling off after the twentieth
or twenty-first beheading.
C. F. Dixon-Johnson wasn’t kidding, when he reported in his 1916 book, “The
Armenians”:
"All the
stories of Turkish misdeeds have proved on investigation to be gross exaggerations
beyond the belief of any thoughtful person."
(Mr. Dixon-Johnson
illustrates his point with similar ridiculous stories reported in his nation's equally prestigious The London Times.)
It’s heartbreaking to have confirmed time and time again that the ones who spread
these horrifically fabricated stories to Western minds were men and women of religion. I’d prefer to believe people who devote themselves to religion are
the last salvation of “goodness” when humanity goes bonkers. Alas, from the evil
men who ordered the Crusades to the evil Taliban who particularly subjugated
women... there is no historical shortage of extreme religiousness that has caused so
much hatred and misery and destruction.
3) Think about the effects of these reports, especially printed in such trustworthy
and reputable newspapers as The New York Times. Multiply
such stories many, many times over the years from newspapers, books, television,
movies... where the Armenians, Greeks and other Turk-haters have had a total free
reign over what was being said, entirely unopposed. (“Who wants to defend
Turks?” — Pauline Kael, in her analysis of “Midnight Express”).
I recently visited the archives of an Internet forum where Turks confront
Turk-haters ... I always lend an ear to the more civilized among the latter to see
what kind of objective evidence they can offer to back up their charges. I ran into
a message from one of them ... I think it was from a gentleman called “Mehik” (“I
hate Turks so fucking much!!!! DEATH TO THE TURKISH PEOPLE!!! DEATH TO THE TURKISH
RACE!”), who asked why it was that so many people dislike the Turks.... offering
justification for his feelings, since his is the majority opinion. (Although,
fortunately, not usually to the same level of intensity.) If you have ever wondered
as well, now you know the answer: almost totally one-sided media manipulation that
has lasted generations. This is why, when Westerners travel to Turkey, they are
usually in disbelief when they discover the real identity of the Turks has no
bearing with what they have been misled to believe. Such contact form the seeds of
the rare "Pro-Turk" Westerner, assuming the minds of Westerners have not
been poisoned beyond the point of return.
PLAGIARIZED LITERATURE
TO HELP WITH CONCOCTION OF HORROR STORIES
"As to the story that Armenian
women, who, rather than 'suffer dishonor at the hands of (their) Turkish
persecutors,' threw themselves into an abyss until the ravine was filled with
corpses, the American correspondent says that 'the horrible narrative is a
reproduction, with additions and embellishments to suit the occasion, of an
old tale in poetry by Mrs. Hemans years ago, under the title of 'The Suliote
Mother'."
Well! Not the typical kind of "lemming"-like
behavior when one thinks of Armeni-Lemmings,
but fret not... the cliff note never happened. However, notice how similar in
tone this story is, to the nonsense of the Times article above.
Prof. Turkkaya Ataov, in An Armenian Source (1895)
reporting on the work of an American New York newspaper correspondent, who
published in booklet form five letters he had written in and sent from
Istanbul... entitled, "The Armenian Troubles and Where The
Responsibility Lies." The Associated Press correspondent believed the
exaggerated massacre reports during the time of "The Bloody Sultan,"
and particularly the Sassoon events of 1894, had been 'polluted with
falsehood and exaggerations.' The newspaper man further reported
that the disturbances were ' brought about by the Armenian revolutionary
committees'... and revealed that Armenian conspirators murdered the
Rev. Edward Riggs and two other American missionaries and fastened the blame
on the Turks. No doubt The New York
Times among other Western publications must have
eaten up this lie (only one of countless others accepted at face value),
adding fuel to the fire of Western anti-Turkish prejudice.
|
|
|
Related:
Examples of Biased New York
Times Coverage from the Period
|
|