Ataturk a visionary mass murderer
Mitsos***
January 6, 2000
John McLaughlin
The McLaughlin Group
1211 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 810
Washington, D.C. 20036
Dear Dr. McLaughlin:
Greetings and happy New Year.
This letter concerns your choice of Ataturk as person of the millennium,
aired on your January 1-2 broadcast. You supported your decision by
asserting that Ataturk was "a Muslim visionary who, in 1922, abolished
the Ottoman Sultanate, a feudal monarchy; emancipated women, adopted
western dress, converted the Arabic alphabet to Latin -- the only leader
in history to successfully turn a Muslim nation into a western
parliamentary democracy and secular state."
We are deeply troubled both by your choice and by the inaccuracies in
your supporting statement.
While Ataturk did shape Turkey into a secular Turkish state, as Turkey's
first dictator he did so by committing widespread human rights
violations against his own people and by implementing the large-scale
massacre and ethnic cleansing of millions of Turkey's Armenians, Greeks,
Assyrians and other Christian minorities.
After his forces had already routed the Greek army out of Asia Minor in
1922, Ataturk's troops perpetrated one of the most infamous and widely
reported war crimes against an urban civilian population prior to WWII.
According to reports by U.S. Consul George Horton, Ataturk's troops
massacred 200,000 Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna (now Izmir), burning
this cosmopolitan New Testament city to the ground while Western
warships passively watched from its quay.
As a result of widespread atrocities and of decrees by Ataturk's new
government expelling Asia Minor's indigenous Christian inhabitants, well
over a million Greeks were ethnically cleansed from Turkey. Many have
mistakenly attributed this violent extinction of Hellenism's
three-thousand year presence in what is now Turkey to a subsequent
treaty's "population exchange" between Greece and Turkey. In fact,
Ataturk's ethnic cleansing campaign against Turkey's Greek minority had
already taken place � and only 5 years after an earlier Christian
holocaust: the Armenian Genocide.
On November 26, 1979, the New York Times wrote: "[a]ccording to the most
recent statistics, the Christian population in Turkey has diminished
from 4,500,000 at the beginning of this century to just about 150,000.
Of those, the Greeks are no more than 7,000. Yet, in 1923 they were as
many as 1.2 million." Many have argued that it was Ataturk that set the
precedent for further ethnic cleansing campaigns in the Balkans after
engineering what was arguably the region's most successful one.
Most importantly, by any meaningful definition of what a "western
parliamentary democracy" is, a more sober look at modern Turkey will
reveal that Turkey is neither western nor democratic.
Turkey has among the worst human rights records on earth. According to
Human Rights Watch, "police continue to shoot and kill peaceful
demonstrators" and there is "massive continuing abuse of human rights in
Turkey." Torture and extra-judicial killings are prevalent, and the
military continues to rule, Oz-like, behind a thin veneer of democracy.
Your colleagues, Dr. McLaughlin, are being imprisoned, tortured and even
murdered in Turkey for reporting facts and expressing their opinions --
a liberty that you and journalists supportive of the Turkish government
here in the US may take for granted.
In March, the Committee to Protect Journalists maintained that "for the
fifth consecutive year, Turkey held more journalists in prison than any
other country" ahead of China and Syria. Likewise, a May 1999 report
from Reporters Sans Frontieres called upon the Council of Europe to
investigate and condemn Turkey for its imprisonment, torture, beatings
and assaults of more than 70 journalists since 1998.
Even Western journalists are censored, yet little mention is made in our
press. NY Times Istanbul bureau chief Stephen Kinzer had his office
ransacked by Turkish secret police and was detained and assaulted while
on assignment in southeast Turkey. On June 10th Turkish courts began the
criminal prosecution of Andrew Finkel for using the phrase "army of
occupation" when referring to Turkish troops. An American citizen and
correspondent for Time, CNN and The Times of London, Finkel faces a 6
year maximum prison sentence and remarked: "If this can happen to me,
what can they do to Kurds with no foreign connections?"
A report leaked in 1998 by the Turkish prime minister's office to
discredit his predecessor had revealed that the government had spent $50
million financing a campaign of terror against its own citizens. This
shadow government of right-wing extremists and underworld assassins
perpetrated thousands of murders, kidnappings and bombings of Islamic
leaders, Kurds, businessmen, journalists, students and opposition
leaders over the past ten years. According to the Associated Press, the
investigation concluded that since the 1980s "Turkish death squads
carried out many of Turkey's 14,000 unsolved murders".
In addition, most of the 35,000 fatalities arising from Turkey's war
against its Kurdish separatists have been Kurds, and Human Rights Watch
attributes the vast majority of civilian deaths to Turkish troops.
According to a State Department report, up to 3 million Kurds have been
ethnically cleansed by Turkey's military. In 1974, using a Greek Cypriot
coup as a pretext, Turkish forces invaded the northern part of Cyprus
and ethnically cleansed 200,000 Greek Cypriots. Turkey continues to
occupy Cyprus in violation of numerous UN resolutions.
The fact remains that, in addition to its secular nature, the Turkish
state also inherited its repressive authoritarianism from Ataturk.
Far from being a "Muslim visionary", Ataturk's brutal repression of
practicing Muslims was motivated in large part by hate, and many
historians now believe that Ataturk himself was not a Muslim. According
to French historian J. Benoist-Mechin, Ataturk stated: "through the
abusive interpretation of ignorant and filthy priests......Islam, this
absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, is a rotting corpse which poisons
our lives" (from "Jihad", Paul Fregosi). Ataturk institutionalized his
hate of Islam and executed, tortured and imprisoned Muslims for wearing
beards and fezes, praying, or for simply practicing their faith. Many
believe Ataturk's anti-Islamic Inquisition, and its perpetuation by the
Turkish state, has had the effect of radicalizing Islam.
While he did institute many positive and revolutionary reforms after
western models and later sought friendship with Greece, Ataturk also set
up what would be considered a ruthless dictatorship by any contemporary
standard, which he used to suppress Muslims and crush dissent to his
program of Turkification and secularization. After Turkey's indigenous
Christian minorities were depopulated, Ataturk established Turkey's
policy of destroying its Kurdish minority through forced assimilation,
ethnic cleansing and democide, a policy that continues to keep Turkey
out of the EU and in brazen violation of western humanitarian norms.
While Ataturk incorporated a parliamentary system into his government,
he also established the military's political dominance and perpetuated
Turkey's authoritarian tradition. And while Ataturk is often glorified
for secularizing Turkey, an examination of present-day Syria, Iraq, and
yes, Turkey should instruct that the secular nature of a nation's
government, Muslim or otherwise, is no guarantee that it will be a
democratic one.
Whether looking at Germany's Nazi regime, the Soviet Union, or communist
China, some of history's most repressive political systems, and some of
its greatest atrocities, have been realized by secular governments
despite the fact that they too "emancipated women" and, in the latter
two examples, "abolished feudal monarchies". A more temperate analysis
would place Ataturk alongside Mussolini, Pinochet, Pol Pot or any other
number of brutal 20th Century dictators, noting that they too achieved
significant economic, social, military or other achievements.
Turkey's national mythology of Ataturk as an enlightened, humanitarian
and progressive ruler has been ratified by much of America's political
and media establishment as a result of the US's committed patronage of
Turkey. Adopting Turkey's ethic of denial, this in turn has corrupted
our own democratic process. In addition, many Greek leaders and
academics themselves have forgotten or overlooked these painful
historical truths, due in large part to the two decades of d�tente
between Greece and Turkey that were ushered in by Ataturk and his Greek
counterpart, and due to Ataturk's attempts to secularize and modernize
Turkey.
Yet evidence of just how far the gulf is between the mythology of Turkey
as a "western parliamentary democracy", and the reality of the modern
Turkish state as among the most repressive in the world, can be seen in
how Ataturk himself is treated: any disparagement of Ataturk is still a
criminal offense in Turkey. Bringing up the fact that Ataturk molested
male and female children, for example (discussed in Lord Kinross'
biography of Ataturk, Chapter 2, p. 21), or that he was an alcoholic who
died of cirrhosis of the liver will likely land you in a Turkish prison.
How well would Americans understand Jefferson, Washington or Lincoln --
or ourselves -- if we similarly censored open debate? It is this policy
of censorship, and the resulting lack of historical balance, that
perpetuates both Turkey's apotheosis of Ataturk and its culture of denial.
When prominent members of our media legitimize this mythology, they help
to further trap Turkey in a backwards and anachronistic holding pattern
while much of the Balkans and Eastern Europe continue the painful
process of genuine democracy-building and of pursuing peaceful
integration with their neighbors into larger, mutually beneficial
regional economies.
Finally, given the incredible achievements of the many men and women who
have shaped our millennium, and given the crimes against humanity and
the repressive political system that Ataturk, a marginal figure of 20th
century world history, is responsible for, choosing Ataturk as the
greatest person of the millennium was a marked departure from your
program's insightful and well-informed commentary.
Military prodigies such as Napoleon, Genghis Khan, and George
Washington; paradigm-shifting visionaries such as Newton, Copernicus,
Einstein and Darwin; monumental leaders such as Queen Elizabeth I,
Chinese Emperor K'ang-hsi, and Byzantium's Emperors Theodora and Michael
Palaeologus; timeless sages such as Thomas Jefferson, Africa's Nnamdi
Azikiwe, and Adam Smith; giants of political and social change such as
Luther, Marx and Gandhi; innovators such as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison
and Bill Gates; creative geniuses such as Domenicos Theotocopoulos (El
Greco), Da Vinci, Beethoven, Rembrandt, and Shakespeare -- whatever the
criteria used, whether military, political or humanitarian, Ataturk
makes an extremely poor choice for person of the millennium,
particularly given that his legacy of authoritarian repression is still
with us today in the memories of survivors and their families as well as
in the current political system of Turkey itself.
We urge you to reconsider your choice of person of the millennium, and
ask that you consider announcing your selection of a more worthy
recipient in your next broadcast.
Thank you kindly for your consideration. We welcome your response to our
concerns, which shall be passed on to our members, and will be
contacting your office within the week.
Very truly yours,
George J. Dariotis
Supreme President
American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association
http://www.ahmp.org/McLaugh1.html
The Justice Squad
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