European Council rejects demand to open Hagia Sophia as a church
WolfWolf
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European Council's Parliamentary Assembly has rejected a motion asking
Turkey to open Hagia Sophia as a church, the state-run Anatolia news agency
reported yesterday.
Assembly Deputy Chairman and Turkish Delegation Chairman Uluc Gurkan held a
press conference in Parliament yesterday and stated that the motion filed by
Romanian Vadim Tudar and 27 other parliamentarians to the European Council
was rejected by the assembly because of a request filed by Turkish
parliamentarians.
The motion defined Istanbul as, "Constantinople, the magnificent Christian
city under occupation," and asked for the opening of Hagia Sophia as a
church. Gurkan said that the Hungarian and British parliamentarians mostly
supported the motion, and added that their request remained as a mad
initiative.
Gurkan noted that such initiatives might lead to religion enmity and
stressed that nobody should open such a Pandora's box. Gurkan added that the
motion was not transacted in the assembly in order to avoid it being
transferred to the Culture Commission and thus gain a "document"
characteristic.
Ankara - Turkish Daily News
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The magnificent city of Istanbul is by no way "under occupation".
REAL
WolfWolf wrote:
> European Council rejects demand to open Hagia Sophia as a church
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What was HAGIA SOPHIA orginally built as?
A Church.
Uzman
> WolfWolf wrote:
>
>> European Council rejects demand to open Hagia Sophia as a
>> church
...
> What was HAGIA SOPHIA orginally built as?
>
> A Church.
read the your own word which cames after "Hagia Sophia"
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3CA5CF7E...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com...
What was the European Council originally founded for?
As a POLITICAL body.
WolfWolf
The European
REAL
> The magnificent city of Istanbul is by no way "under occupation".
THE NIGHT OF TERROR IN CONSTANTINOPLE
Under the terms of the agreement regarding the exchange of populations in
the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek population of Constantinople-a
thriving community-and the muslim community residing in Western Thrace were
exempted from the exchange process.
In the beginning of the 20th century there were 300,000 Greeks residing in
Constantinople.
They had managed to survive there despite centuries of oppression and
persecution under the Ottoman yoke. But the Turks were determined to expel
all Greeks from their ancient home using all available means. Thus, the
Turks systematically used the following measures in order to accomplish
their objective :
a) In May 1941, large numbers of young men ranging in age from 18-38. were
conscripted into the Turkish army from the Greek and Armenian communities
The Turkish intention was to exterminate these young men through the
well-known method of <<forced-labour battalions>>. If this extermination
plan was not successful it was due to protests from the Western allies and
the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad in December 1942. Seeing the tides
of war shifting, the Turkish authorities permitted the discharge of these
soldiers.
b) On 11 Noverriber 1942, the Turkish government passed a law regarding
taxation of property of non-muslims, known as the VA RLIK VE RGISI. Through
this !aw non-muslim citiizens had to submit, without the right to appeal, to
the discretion and arbitrary judgment of the tax clerks. The tax clerks, in
turn, were instructed to appraise property at amounts many times over the
actual value of each property. Then, if the individual concerned was unable
to make payments of the enormous tax share (quota), the property was seized
and the unfortunate owners were exiled to ACKALE, in Anatolia.
As a result (of the use) of these harsh and inhuman measures, by 1955 only
25,000 people were left, rather than the 450,000 that should have been their
number given a normal rate of growth in 35 years.
On the night of the 6th September 1955, and using the Cyprus situation as a
pretext, the Turks dealt the coupdegrace to the remaining inhabitants. The
whole story of this pogrom is as follows :
On Saturday the 3rd of September, 1955, the wife of the Turkish Consul in
Thessaloniki asked for, and received, from a photographer in Thessaloniki
supposedly for a keep-sake a series of photographs and films of the Turkish
Consulate and the neighboring home where Kemal Ataturk was born. The very
next day she and her family left for Turkey.
At ten past midnight on the 6th of September,1955, in the garden of the
Consulate, between the two buildings, dynamite exploded resulting in broken
windows in both buildings. The Greek authorities rushed immediately to the
scene. They established that two more explosive devices had been positioned
in the Consulate yard and that within the building there was only one
Turkish guard. In the investigation that followed it was determined that the
explosives were placed there by the guard and his accomplice, a Turkish
student at the Law School of the University of Thessaloniki, Oktai Egin
Faik, who had brought the dynamite from Turkey a few days earlier.
On the 6th of September, Turkish newspapers using forged versions of the
photos of the Turkish consul's wife and even before the explosion took place
in Greece, depicted Kemal's birthplace as totally destroyed. By the evening,
newspapers all over Turkey knew of the alleged destruction of Kemal's home
setting off waves of anger among the Turkish populace.
The Turkish authorities then transported large groups of people in trains
and military vehicles from Anatolia to Constantinople.
The attack by the angry mobs began at 5 : 50 P.M on the 6th of September
1955 and ended at 02 : 00 A.M on the 7th of September 1955. The police
calmly assisted and even guided the mobs, in their relentless path of
destruction.
At 00 : 20 A.M on the 7th of September 1955 martial law was finally
declared, at 02 : 00 A.M curfew began and at 02 : 30 A.M the authorities had
restored a semblance of order.
Screaming slogans <<Today your property, tomorrow your lives>> the mobs had
perpetrated terrible crimes. Those who guided them knew that by terrorizing
the last Greek residents of Constantinople they would compel them to desert
their homeland, once and for all. Simultaneously by destroying monuments
which were proof of the glorious Greek past of Constantinople, they would
eradicate even future reminders of the Greek presence.
The results of the vandalisms were :
the Theological School of Halki, the Marasleios School, The Monestary of
Valoukli, the Zappeio School for Girls and many other sites, suffered great
damage.
of the 83 Greek Orthodox churches in the <<Polis>> 59 were burned and most
others suffered serious damage to the icons and ancient paintings of great
value.
the tombs of Patriarchs were destroyed, Christian cemeteries and ossuaries
were defiled ;
3,000 homes were looted and destroyed ;
4348 Greek stores were looted and destroyed ;
200 Greek women were raped ;
hundreds of Greeks were ill-treated or tortured, such as the old Bishop of
Derkon Iakovos; the metropolitan of Ilioupolis Yennadios, whose beard was
cut off and who was then dragged through the streets so that he would die
shortly thereafter from ill-treatment; and Bishop Pamphilou Yennadios that
was thrown into the burned ruins of Valoukli;
15 Greeks were murdered and among them a 90 year old monk at the Valoukli
Monastery, Chrys. Mantas, who was burned alive. Many others in the monastery
were seriously wounded.
After the pogrom a great portion of the Greek population left Constantinople
to save their lives.
On the 20th of September,1975, in a special 35 page Survey section of the
influential English magazine, The Economist, it was written : <<Turkish
charges that the Moslem population in Western Thrace is harried by the Greek
authorities are gross exaggerations. In 1923 there were 300,000 Greeks
living in Constantinople and 110,000 Turks living in Thrace. Today, there
are 15,000 Greeks living in Istanbul and 120,000 Turks in Thrace. The Greeks
ask, with some justification, which country has been putting the pressure on
which minority>>. (Survey-15).
It is important for us to realize that today,1982, only 4,000 Greeks still
remain in Constantinople.
In the pages to follow you will find irrefutable photographic evidence of a
typical sample of Turkish cruelty, which managed to destroy the Hellenic
population of Constantinople.
---------
Swiss paper details systematic elimination of Hellenism on islands handed to
Turkey
Istanbul, 25/06/1996 (ANA)
In a rare article concerning uprooted Hellenism, a European newspaper
referred to the islands of Imvros and Tenedos in the northeastern Aegean
Sea, given to Turkey by the Lausanne Treaty, describing the isles' present
image as one of "destroyed schools, uprooted villages, uprooted families and
padlocked houses."
The Swiss paper "Neue Zircher Zeitung" in a full-page article stressed that
the demographic structure of the islands' population had illegally changed,
adding that the ratio of 9,000 Greeks for 100 Turks has changed to 250
Greeks for 7,500 Turks today.
The German-language Swiss publication also referred to a report by the
Helsinki Committee on the fate of the ethnic Greek population of the two
islands and to landmark dates - 1964, closure of Greek-language schools and
1965, the establishment of agricultural prisons with the forced
expropriation of the most fertile land belonging to ethnic Greeks.
The newspaper said that from 1960 to 1990, 200 churches and monasteries were
destroyed, highlighting the history of these predominately Greek-populated
islands given to Turkey in 1923 for geostrategical reasons.
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GREECE MUST BRING THE ISSUE OF THE AEGEAN ISLANDS OF IMVROS AND TENEDOS TO
THE HAGUE
MPA 13 June 1996
Representatives of Imvros and Tenedos natives and university professors,
addressing the Greek Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee demanded that
Greece must appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the
issue of the human rights violations committed by the Turks on the islands
of Imvros and Tenedos. All the speakers underlined that the Greek government
is necessary to make use of all the special protection measures in order to
stop the continuing violations.
It should be noted, that this is the first time that the issue of those two
islands is being discussed in the Greek Parliament.
As it was stressed, 99% of the Greek properties have been expropriated and
of the 12.000 Greeks, who lived on the island of Imvros, now only 300
remain, while the Turks are 8.000.
International Relations professors Neoklis Sarris, Leonidas Papadopoulos and
Dimitris Tsourkas, as well as, honorary ambassador Efthimios Stophoropoulos
underlined that Greece can appeal to international organizations accusing
Turkey of Lauzanne Treaty violations based on substantiated evidence.
University professor Neoklis Sarris stated that there are no lost homelands
but only forgotten ones, pointing out the Greece ignored the islands of
Imvros and Tenedos and abandoned them to the mercy of Turkey.
He said that Greece has no right to be silent, adding that if the same
happened in Thrace it would have caused the outcry of the international
public opinion. Prof. Sarris concluded by saying that Ankara's goal is to
bring back to the Aegean the status that existed before the Balkan War.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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A 6 YEAROLD BOY WAS BURNED ALIVE IN AN ARSON ATTACK TARGETING A GREEK HOUSE
IN THE ISLAND OF IMVROS
MPA: Thessaloniki, October 20, 1999
The tragic death of 6 yearold Alexis, a boy burned alive in his house in the
village of Gliki in the island of Imvros, continues to cause revolt and deep
sorrow to the Greeks living in the islands of Imvros and Tenedos in
north-eastern Aegean and to the Greeks all over the world. The house of the
Greek family of Maria Sozde was the target of an arson attack which also
resulted to the injury of Alexis' 2 yearold sister, Maria.
In a statement issued by the Turkish foreign ministry it is mentioned that
all the necessary measures are being taken in order to stop such revolting
attacks from happening again. In the statement it is also mentioned that an
interrogation is underway and those responsible will be arrested as soon as
possible.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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THE GREEK-AMERICANS ARE OUTRAGED BY THE TRAGIC DEATH OF A 6 YEAROLD BOY IN
THE ISLAND OF IMVROS
MPA: Thessaloniki, October 21, 1999
Archbishop Iakovos with letters addressed to US president adviser on
National Security issues Sandy Berger, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and
European parliament deputies as well as with a strong written statement to
the New York based Greek-American newspaper "Proini" protests against the
horrible murder of a 6 yearold Greek boy in the island of Imvros in
north-eastern Aegean who was burned alive when Turks set his family house
alight.
The Greeks from Istanbul living in New York also reacted strongly to the
news and with a statement to the newspaper "Proini" in New York they pointed
out that similar actions had forced them themselves to abandon their
ancestral homes.
It should be noted that yesterday the Turkish authorities had announced the
arrest of two suspects on the case, while the Turkish prefect tried to
explain that the motives of the attack were not nationalist.
Responding to a question on the horrible crime, Greek government spokesman
Dimitris Reppas maintained low tones and stated that the Greek authorities
are in contact and cooperation with the Turkish authorities on the issue and
added that it is positive the fact that the majority of the Turkish mass
media characterized the incident as a criminal and inhuman act.
In a letter addressed to Mr. Sandy Berger, Archbishop Iakovos called on the
US government to conduct its own investigation and protest to the Turkish
embassy in Washington against the violation of article 14 of the Treaty of
Lauzanne which has resulted to the arrival of Turkish settlers on the island
of Imvros where only 360 Greeks continue to live under unacceptable
conditions.
Mehmet Cinar
Yarisini cami , yarisini kilise yapalim , adini , Fetto$ Ay -Ecevit
Teklestirme Hanesi yapalim. UzWolf larda bilet kessinler kapida.
Fettullah Gulen in yaptiklarini takdir ediyorum.- Ecevit
Dedi mi deme di mi ? Hodri meydan.
Camur at bir guzel yalasin.
Guray Acar
REAL wrote:
You mean before 1453 .. Things have slightly changed since that day you
know.. Or perhaps that's what you can't get to accept .. :)) ..
Your arrogance is amazing.. For 500 years that place was also a mosque.
Yet the government changed it to a museum in an effort find a middle
away between the muslim and christian communities.. But no !! .REAL
is not happy.. He wants it to become church.. In fact, REAL will never
be happy until whole Anatolia becomes "the old beautiful Christian
land full of happy civilised Greeks" :)))) .............
REAL
Guray Acar wrote:
> REAL wrote:
>
> > WolfWolf wrote:
> >
> > > European Council rejects demand to open Hagia Sophia as a church
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > What was HAGIA SOPHIA orginally built as?
> >
> > A Church.
>
> You mean before 1453 .. Things have slightly changed since that day you
> know.. Or perhaps that's what you can't get to accept .. :)) ..
>
> Your arrogance is amazing..
arrogance? I think you are dreaming words up in the air. All I pointed out was that
Hagia Sophia was built as a church. Stating a fact is arrogance? Oh what arrogance
to say a truth you do not want to hear. After 1453 when the Ottoman Empire attacked
the city and captured it, with the rape, looting and pillage that occured it was
converted to a mosque by the conquerors and now a museum.
You say "arrogance" but could it be that you just don't like to know what it was
built for?
> For 500 years that place was also a mosque.
Its builders built it as a church. Its owners and the decendants of its owners did
not give permission for it to be converted to anything else apart from what it was.
Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom in Greek (The Church of the Holy Wisdom). What does
Hagia Sophia mean in Turkish?
Is it so arrogant to say that the Hagia Sophia was orginally built as a church? Is
it so arrogant to consider history before the Ottoman Empire? Is it not arrogant to
forget about anything pre 1453?
http://www.byzantium1200.org/hagia.html
The Hagia Sophia is the most important surviving work of byzantine architecture in
Byzantium. It was first built in the fourth century and inaugurated in 360. After a
fire in 404 it was replaced by the second church which burned again in 532. The
present church was mainly erected between 532 and 537 during the reign of Justinian.
In its architectural form, it tries to reconcile the traditions of longitudinal
basilicas and central vaulted churches.The main dome which had a diameter of over 30
m was the biggest church dome until the fifteenth century. The Hagia Sophia was the
church of both the emperor and the patriarch where the most important religious and
state ceremonies were held. The emperor had direct access to it from the palace by a
bridge crossing the street, and the patriarch had his residence in a palace
immediately on the south side of the church.
Copyright © A.Tayfun ?NER
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Hagia_Sophia.html
Hagia Sophia
Great Buildings Online
Architect Isidoros and Anthemios
Location Istanbul, Turkey
Date 532 to 537
Building Type church
Construction System bearing masonry
Climate warm temperate
Context urban
Style Byzantine
Notes A tremendous domed space.
Images Photo, exterior, end elevation
Photo, showing context from across the water
Photo
Photo
Photo
Photo
Photo
Drawings Available on The GBC CD-ROM. Contributions appreciated
3D Model Spatial Model (DesignWorkshop 3dmf)
Model Viewing Instructions
Discussion Hagia Sophia Commentary
"If there is one work that realizes the 'ideal' Byzantine model, it is the
astonishing church of Hagia Sophia built as the new Cathedral of Constantinople by
the Emperor Justinian...He intended it as the keystone of his vast architectural
campaign...
"Hagia Sophia was built in the amazingly short time of five years...The daring of
the design, and perhaps the speed of the construction, made the structure unstable.
Its first dome fell after an earthquake, and its replacement (in 563, with a higher
profile than the original) had to be repaired after partial collapses in the ninth
and fourteenth centuries."
Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: from Prehistory to
Post-Modernism. p171.
"The choice of plan was...decided and imposed by Justinian himself. Santa Sophia
does not have the basilical plan generally adopted for large buildings, but is on
the centralized pattern....
The architectural form of Santa Sophia is concealed by the richness of decoration.
The walls, from the ground up, are covered in identical manner. Plaques of red,
yellow and green marble blend with the mosaics, and these are further embellished by
the capitals, imposts, architraves and friezes."
Mitchell Beazley. The World Atlas of Architecture. p180.
Details
The church was built 532 to 537 and the dome replaced in 563 after an earthquake.
Resources Sources on Hagia Sophia
Werner Blaser and Monica Stucky. Drawings of Great Buildings. Boston: Birkhauser
Verlag, 1983. ISBN 3-7643-1522-9. LC 83-15831. NA2706.U6D72 1983. plan and section
drawings, p49.
Francis D. K. Ching. Architecture: Form, Space, and Order. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1979. ISBN 0-442-21535-5. LC 79-18045. NA2760.C46. perspective sketch,
p26. plan and section, p212. A nice graphic introduction to architectural ideas.
Updated 1996 edition available at Amazon.com
Roger H. Clark and Michael Pause. Precedents in Architecture. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1985. nine squares diagram, p188.
Howard Davis. Slide from photographer's collection. PCD 2260.1012.0218.
Spiro Kostof. A History of Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
ISBN 0-19-503472-4. LC 84-25375. NA200.K65 1985. p262, 263, fig 11.27, 11.28.
John Julius Norwich, ed. Great Architecture of the World. London: Mitchell Beazley
Publishers, 1975. photos, cutaway drawings, p84-85. Reprint edition: Da Capo Press,
April 1991. ISBN 0-3068-0436-0. An accessible, inspiring and informative overview
of world architecture, with lots of full-color cutaway drawings, and clear
explanations. Available at Amazon.com
John Julius Norwich, ed. The World Atlas of Architecture. New York: Portland House,
1988. ISBN 0-517-66875-0. p180.
G. E. Kidder Smith. Looking at Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Publishers,
1990. ISBN 0-8109-3556-2. distant photo, p36, interior photo of dome, 37.
Henri Stierlin. Comprendre l'Architecture Universelle 1. Paris: Office du Livre S.A.
Fribourg (Suisse), 1977. longitudinal section drawing, p111. transverse section
drawing, p111. plan drawing, p110. nsite plan drawing of constantinople in the
byzantine period, p109.
Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture, from Prehistory to
Post-Modernism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986. ISBN 0-13-044702-1.
NA200.T7. p171-174.
> Yet the government changed it to a museum in an effort find a middle
> away between the muslim and christian communities.. But no !!
Really? Kemal Ataturk changed it to a museum. Middle ground... hardly!.. if you have
substantiation for this please provide it. Besides we saw witness of that middle
ground in 1955 and the closure of the Halki Theological school. Why else has that
"middle ground" led to only 3,000 or so elderly left in the city from it's 300,000?
More like part of attempts to remove the vestiges of the Ottoman empires theocracy
and replace it with his Kemalism.
> .REAL
> is not happy.. He wants it to become church..
Where EXACTLY did I say this?
When the Refah party was voted in they wanted it converted to a mosque.. so what?
> In fact, REAL will never
> be happy until whole Anatolia becomes "the old beautiful Christian
> land full of happy civilised Greeks" :)))) .............
again more claims.........and again you completely ignore the Armenians, Assyrians,
Kurds, Pontians etc etc
Maybe you should respect those whose home it was for centuries that is until the
fascist Turkish regime booted them out by force ignoring the Lausanne treaty and
dignity and respect for human rights of non-Turkish minorities, including non-
kemalist Turks. The questions you should ponder is when will Turkey allow the
reopening of the Theological school of Halki? When will Turkey restore inheritance
rights to Yunan Mali?
Maybe you should learn some history.
THE NIGHT OF TERROR IN CONSTANTINOPLE
Under the terms of the agreement regarding the exchange of populations in
the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek population of Constantinople-a
thriving community-and the muslim community residing in Western Thrace were
exempted from the exchange process.
In the beginning of the 20th century there were 300,000 Greeks residing in
Constantinople.
They had managed to survive there despite centuries of oppression and
persecution under the Ottoman yoke. But the Turks were determined to expel
all Greeks from their ancient home using all available means. Thus, the
Turks systematically used the following measures in order to accomplish
their objective :
a) In May 1941, large numbers of young men ranging in age from 18-38. were
conscripted into the Turkish army from the Greek and Armenian communities
The Turkish intention was to exterminate these young men through the
well-known method of <<forced-labour battalions>>. If this extermination
plan was not successful it was due to protests from the Western allies and
the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad in December 1942. Seeing the tides
of war shifting, the Turkish authorities permitted the discharge of these
soldiers.
b) On 11 Noverriber 1942, the Turkish government passed a law regarding
taxation of property of non-muslims, known as the VA RLIK VE RGISI. Through
this law non-muslim citiizens had to submit, without the right to appeal, to
Grand Sen~or
I agree with Real it should be opened as a Church rather than staying
dead as a museum, but also the Grand Mosque in Spain should be opened
as mosque.
It was originally built as - mosque.
Let's get Real;-)
Constantinos Catsoulis
that wanted the union of the two churches.This is why the Othomans
closed it. They didn't close all the churches! They even made
Scholarios, a Greek hating man, the Patriarch right after the taking
of Constantinople.
Guray Acar
Aya Sofya still belongs to you.. Get it ?? .. Istanbul not
Konstantinople.. Aya Sofya not Hagia Sofia... My land, my
city, not yours....
And please don't add any "rape, massacre" stories in the invasion
of Istanbul for your own convenience..
Guray Acar
I am not aware of this things you just said.. As far as I know, it
was an Islamic tradition to convert the largest temple in a newly
invaded city/town to a mosque.. Hagia Sofia happened to be the
biggest temple in the city... I don't think it is a particularly nice
thing to do.. But, hell, I don't think it is nice to invade in the first
place..
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
> WolfWolf wrote:
>
> > The magnificent city of Istanbul is by no way "under occupation".
>
> THE NIGHT OF TERROR IN CONSTANTINOPLE
>
THE DAY OF TERROR IN
XODJALI
by Thomas Goltz
February 26th, 1992 seemed like a regular working day. Iranian Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Velayati was back in town to finally bestow diplomatic
recognition on Azerbaijan, as well as to respond to American Secretary of
State James Baker III's recent comments about the growing threat of Iranian
influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
It was not the Islamic Republic of Iran that posed any threat to the region,
intoned the wiry Iranian emissary, but the United States America. In
addition to being the country responsible for the continued bloodshed
throughout the world, it was America that was actively fomenting conflict in
Karabakh. The Islamic Republic, in contrast, was a country interested in
peace between nations and peoples. To that end, Dr. Velayati had brought a
peace plan for the increasingly bloody and senseless conflict in
Karabakh-and one both Armenia and Azerbaijan had agreed to sign. He himself
planned to visit Karabakh the next day.
This was newsworthy, and I was getting ready to file a story on the subject
to the Washington Post when Hicran came rushing into my work room. She had
been on the telephone with the information section of the Popular Front, and
had some very distressing news: sources in Agdam were reporting a stream of
Azeri refugees from Karabakh filling the streets of the city, fleeing a
massive attack.
There had been many exaggerated reports about the conflict germinated from
both sides, and perhaps this was just another, but I thought it best to
start working the phone. Strangely, no one in government answered. Perhaps
they were all at the Gulistan complex, having dinner with the Iranian
delegation. So I waited for a while, and then started calling people at
home. Around midnight, I got through to Vafa Gulizade.
"Sorry for calling so late," I apologized. "But what about this rumor--"
"I can't talk about it," said Vafa, cutting me off and hanging up.
A sense of unease filled my gut. Vafa was usually polite to a fault. Perhaps
he was sleeping? I decided to call again anyway, but the number stayed busy
for the next half hour. Maybe he left it off the hook, I thought, and made
one last effort and the call rang through.
"Vafa," I said, apologizing again. "What is going on?"
"Something very terrible has happened," he groaned.
"What?" I demanded.
"There has been a massacre," he said.
"Where?"
"In Karabakh, a town called Xodjali," he said, and then he hung up the phone
again.
Xodjali.
I had been there before. Twice, in fact. The first time was in September,
when we had staked out the airport waiting for Boris Yeltsin to come
through. The last time had been a month before, in January, 1992. By then
the only way to get to Xodjali was by helicopter because the Armenians had
severed the road link to Agdam. I remembered that little adventure all too
well. Doubting the many reports from the Armenian side that the Azeris were
massively armed and that their helicopters were 'buzzing' Armenian villages
in the territory for fun and terror, I had traveled out to Agdam with Hugh
Pope of the (London) Independent to chat with refugees about their
situation.
Refugees were easy to find at Agdam. They were all over the place. The
heaviest concentration was at the local airfield for the simple reason that
many of the refugees didn't want to be refugees anymore: they were going
back to their homes in Xodjali. Their pride had silenced their better sense.
One was a 35-year old mother of four by the name of Zumrut Ezova. When I
asked why she was returning, she said it was better 'to die in Karabakh'
than beg in the streets of Agdam.
"Why can't the government open the road?" shouted Zumrut in my ear over the
roar of the nearby chopper's engines, "Why are they making us fly in like
ducks, ready to get shot?"
I didn't have an answer.
Then someone was lurching toward me from across the airfield. It was Alef
Khadjiev, the commander of airport security at Xodjali and the gentleman who
had saved us from the Agdam drunks during the Yeltsin visit three months
before. He had been pretty chipper then, but despite his broad smile for me,
he was no longer fun and games. I asked him what the situation was in his
hometown.
"Come on," said Khadjiev. "Let's go to Xodjali--then you can see for
yourself, and write the truth if you dare."
Behind him stood a MI-8 helicopter, its blades slowly turning. A mass of
refugees were clawing their way aboard. The chopper was already dangerously
overloaded with humanity and food-stuff, and waiting on the tarmac was even
more luggage, including a rusted, 70mm cannon and diverse boxes of
ammunition.
"I'm not going," said Pope, "I've got a wife and kids."
The rotor began to twirl faster, and I had to decide quickly.
"See you later," I said, wondering if I ever would.
I got aboard, one of more than 50 people on a craft designed for 24, in
addition to the various munitions and provisions. I thought to myself: this
is insane; there is still time to get off. Then it was too late. With a
lurch, we lifted off the ground and my stomach smashed through my ears. I
could see Pope waving at me while walking away from the field, and wished I
was with him on terra firma. The MI-8 cork-screwed up to its flight altitude
of 3500 feet-high enough to sail over the Askeron Gap to Xodjali and avoid
Armenian ground fire. Two dozen helicopters had been hit over the past two
months, including the crash/kill not only the one filled with officials in
November, but another 'bird' a week before. The machine we were flying in
had picked up a round through the fuel tank the week before, the flight
engineer told me. It was lucky that fuel was low and the bullet came in
high. This was all very reassuring to learn as we plugged on through the
Askeron Gap, bucking into head-winds and sleet.
Through breaks in the cloud cover I could see trucks and automobiles driving
the roads below-Armenian machines, fueled by gas and diesel brought in via
their own air-bridge from Armenia (or purchased from Azeri war profiteers).
Finally and mercifully, after a trip that seemed to take hours but really
only lasted maybe 20 minutes, we began our corkscrew descent to the Xodjali
airfield. No-one who has not been aboard such a flight can appreciate what I
felt when the wheels touched ground.
I am alive! I wanted to shout, but thought it most appropriate to stay cool
and act like I did such things twice a day.
"How do you feel?" Alef Khadjiev asked me.
"Normalno," I lied in Russian, cool as cake.
Meanwhile, the chopper was mobbed by residents-some coming to greet loved
ones who had returned; others trying to be the first aboard the helicopter
when it went back up and out. All were there to get the most recent news
from the rest of Azerbaijan: newspapers, gossip, rumors.
The reason for the excitement was pretty obvious: there were no working
phones in Xodjali, no working anything: no electricity, no heating oil and
no running water. The only link with the outside world was the
helicopter-and those were under threat with each run. The isolation of the
place became all too apparent as night fell. I joined Khadjiev and some of
his men in the make-shift mess hall of the tiny garrison, and while we dined
on Soviet army SPAM with raw onions and stale bread to flickering candle
light, he gave me what might be called a front-line briefing.
The situation was bad and getting worse, a depressed Khadjiev told me. The
Armenians had taken all the outlying villages, one by one, over the past
three months. Only two towns remained in Azeri hands: Xodjali and Shusha,
and the road between them was cut. While I knew the situation was
deteriorating, I had no idea it was so bad.
"It is because you believe what they say in Baku," Alef chortled. "We are
being sold-out, utterly."
Baku could open the road to Agdam in a day if the government wanted to, he
said. He now believed the government actually wanted the Karabakh business
to simmer on to distract public attention while the elite continued to
plunder the country.
"If you write that and attribute it to me, I'll deny it," he said. "But it's
true."
The 60 odd men under his command lacked both the weapons and training to
defend the straggling perimeter. The only Azeri soldiers worth their salt
were four veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan who had volunteered to
try and bring some discipline into the ranks of the defenders. The rest were
green-horns-if the Armenians shot off one round, they would answer with a
barrage of fire and waste half their precious ammunition. So it was that
night: around two AM, I was awoken from my sleep by a distant burst of fire
coming from the direction of a neighboring Armenian town called Laraguk,
about 500 yards away from a part of Xodjali called, ironically enough,
'Helsinki Houses.' The Armenian sniper fire was returned with at least 100
rounds from the Azeri side, including bursts of cannon fire from an old BTR,
newly acquired from some Russian deserter. It was the only mechanized
weaponry I saw in the hands of the Azeris. The fire-fight continued
sporadically until dawn, making it impossible to sleep. No-one knew when the
Armenians would make their final push to take the town; everyone knew that
some night they would. Xodjali controlled the Stepanakert airport and was
clearly a major objective for the Armenians. They had to take it. I thought
to myself: I would, if I were them. With that thought came another that
filled me with unease: what would the residents do when they did?
In the morning, people were just standing around-literally. There was not a
single tea shop or restaurant to idle away the time, so people just stood in
small knots in the mud and gravel streets, waiting. The only person I saw
actually do something was a very fat girl who worked as a sales clerk in the
fabric shop where there was nothing to sell. I first saw her rapidly
waddling to work at nine in the morning; the intensity of purpose was
unique, so I followed her into her shop. I next saw in a video, lying dead
on the ground with a pile of others-but that was later. The rest just waited
around, waiting for the ax to fall. I just prayed that it wouldn't be while
I was there.
We wasted the morning away around the airport; a photographer from an Azeri
news agency happened to be around, so the military boys put on a good show,
rolling out of their bunkers and running behind the old BTR, guns blazing.
'Let's do it again, but this time, let me take pictures from the front," the
cameraman asked.
I felt sick and refused to have anything to do with the theatrics.
'These guys are going to die,' I said to myself. 'And I do not want to die
with them just because they are so stupid to be shooting at shadows that
shoot back.'
Alef Khadjiev seemed to agree. We sat together in silence, watching his men
pose for the camera, running hither and yon with brave looks carved on their
physiognomies.
'Let's try that one again!' crowed the photographer.
There was not much else to say.
Finally, around noon, I heard the tell-tale whine of a chopper moving high
over the Gap. Thank God! crowed, but tried to look indifferent. Then I made
my way toward the airfield, and just in time to see the overloaded bird
disgorge its cargo of food, weapons and returning refugees. One kid got off
with a canary in a cage, or maybe he was getting on. I think it was the
former, but honestly, I cannot say for sure. There were a lot of people at
the airport, trying to get on and off that lone bird, and I was merely one
of them.
When those getting on seemed to be more than those getting off, I tried to
get on myself. I didn't care that the chopper was carrying twice or three
times its weight limit, nor did I mind that part of that weight was a
corpse-one of Khadjiev's boys picked off by a sniper the night before. I
wondered if we had had Soviet-style SPAM dinner together, but thought it
impolite to pull back the death-sheet and stare. The engines gunned and
whined, and we lifted with a lurch-but this time I was not afraid of the
flight. I just wanted out. We climbed and climbed, cork-screwing high into
the sky and blowing over the Askeron Gap at 3500 feet with tail-winds. Maybe
we took ground fire; I do not know. But this I did: I would never go back to
Xodjali again.
There were no need for vows.
The last helicopter flight into the surrounded town was on February 13th.
The last food, save for locally grown potatoes, ran out on the 21st.
The clock was ticking quickly toward doom.
It struck on the night of February 26--the anniversary of the massacre of
Armenians at Sumgait in 1988. Only this time, vengeance would demand not an
eye for an eye, but whole human heads.
***
We were in the car at seven and drove as quickly as we could across the
monotonous flats of central Azerbaijan. Brown cotton fields belonging to
collective farms stretched to the horizon in all directions, and men stood
along the roadside waving dead ducks at us as we roared by. We stopped for
gas at a town named Terter and asked the local mayor what was happening in
Agdam. He said he didn't know anything. We stopped again in another town
called Barda, and again took a moment to inquire about events and rumors.
Clueless looks greeted us.
We were starting to think that the whole thing was an exaggerated bum-steer
when we arrived in Agdam and drove into the middle of town, looking for a
bite to eat. It was there that we ran into the refugees. There were ten,
then twenty then hundreds of screaming, wailing residents of Xodjali. Many
recognized me because of my previous visits to the town. They clutched at my
clothes, babbling out the names of their dead relatives and friends and
dragged me to the morgue attached to the main mosque in town to show me
bodies of their relatives.
At first we found it hard to believe what the survivors were saying: the
Armenians had surrounded Xodjali and delivered an ultimatum: get out or die.
Then came a babble of details of the last days, many concerning Commander
Alef Khadjiev.
Sensing doom, Alef had begged the government to bring in choppers to save at
least some of the non-combatants, but Baku had done nothing. Then, on the
night of February 25th, Armenian fedayeen hit the town from three sides. The
fourth had been left open, creating a funnel through which refugees might
flee. Alef gave the order to evacuate: the fighting men would run
interference along the hillside of the Gorgor River valley, while the women
and children and gray-beards escaped below. Groping their way through the
night under fire, by the morning of February 26th, the refugees made it to
the outskirts of a village called Nakhjivanli, on the cusp of Karabakh. They
crossed a road and began working their way downhill toward the forward Azeri
lines and the city Agdam, now only some six miles away via the Azeri outpost
at Shelli.
It was there, in the hillocks and within sight of safety, that something
horrible awaited them: a gauntlet of lead and fire. "They just shot and shot
and shot," wailed a woman named Raisha Aslanova. She said her husband and a
son-in-law were killed in front of her and that her daughter was missing.
Scores, hundreds, possibly a thousand were slaughtered in a turkey-shoot of
civilians and their handful of defenders. Aside from counting every body
there was no way to tell-and most of the bodies remained out of reach, in
the no-man's land between the lines that had become a killing zone and a
picnic site for crows.
One thousand dead in one night? It seemed impossible. But when we began
cross-referencing, the wild claims about the extent of the killing began to
look all too true. The local religious leader in Agdam, Imam Sadik Sadikov,
broke down in tears as he tallied the names of the registered dead on an
abacus. There were 477 that day, a number that did not include those missing
and presumed dead, nor those victims whose entire families had been wiped
out and thus had no one to register them as dead before God. The number 477
represented only the number of confirmed dead by survivors who had made it
to Agdam and were physically able to fulfill, however imperfectly, the
Muslim practice of burying the dead within 24 hours.
Elif Kaban of Reuters was stunned into silliness. My wife Hicran was
paralyzed. Photographer Oleg Litvin fell into a catatonic state and would
only shoot pictures when I threw him at the subject: corpses, graves, and
wailing women who were gouging their cheeks with their nails. Yes, it
required stomach-but it was time to work, to report: a massacre had
occurred, and the world had to know. We scoured the town, making repeated
stops at the hospital, morgue and growing graveyards, out to the ends of the
defensive perimeter to make horrible spot-interviews with straggling
survivors as the stumbled in, and then went back to the hospital to check on
new wounded and then back to the morgue to watch truck-loads of bodies be
brought in for identification and ritual washing before burial. I looked for
familiar faces, and thought I saw some but could not be sure: one corpse was
identified as that belonging to a young veterinarian, who had been shot
through the eye at point-blank range; I tried to remember if I had known or
been introduced to such a man in Xodjali, but could not be sure. Other
bodies, stiffened by rigormortis, seemed to speak of execution: arms were
thrown up as if in permanent surrender. A number of heads lacked hair, as if
the corpses had been scalped. It was not a pretty day.
Toward late afternoon, someone mentioned that a military helicopter on loan
from the Russian garrison at Ganje would be making a flight over the killing
fields, and so we traveled out to the airport. There was no flight, but
there I found old friends.
"Tomas," a man in military uniform gasped, and grabbed me in an embrace, and
wept. "Nash Nachalnik..."
I recognized him as one of Alef Khadjiev's boys, a pimply-faced boy from
Baku who had described himself as a banker before he had volunteered for
duty in Karabakh. He was speaking in Russian, babbling-but one word got
through the tears: the commander...
A few other survivors from the Xodjali garrison stumbled over and seized me.
Of the forty odd men under Alef Khadjiev's command, only ten were left
alive. Dirty, exhausted and exuding what can only be described as survivor's
guilt, they pieced together the awful night and next day-and the death of
their commander, Alef Khadjiev. He was killed by a bullet to the brain while
defending the women and children; most of the women and children died
anyway.
***
Toward evening, we returned to the government guest house in the middle of
town to look for a telephone, and there we met a drained and exhausted
Tamerlan Garayev. A native of Agdam, the deputy speaker of parliament was
one of the few government officials of any sort I saw there. He was
interrogating two Turkmen deserters from the Stepanakert-based 366th
Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Russian Interior Ministry forces. They had
taken refuge in Xodjali a week before. The last element of the tragedy
suddenly clicked into place: it was not only the Armenians who had assaulted
the doomed town, but the Russians.
"Talk, talk!" said Tamerlan, as the two men stared at us.
"We ran away because the Armenian and Russian officers beat us because we
were Muslims," one of the pair, a man named Agamuhammad Mutif related. "We
just wanted to go home to Turkmenistan."
"Then what happened?" Tamerlan demanded.
"Then they attacked the town," said the other. "We recognized vehicles from
our unit."
I thought of Commander Sergei Shukrin, and wondered if he had been involved.
The two fled along with everyone else in the town, and were helping a group
of women and children escape through the mountains when they were discovered
by the Armenians and 366th.
"They opened fire and at least twelve were killed in our group alone," Mutif
related. "After that, we just ran and ran."
A Russian-backed assault by Armenians on an Azeri town, resulting in up to
one thousand dead?
This was news. But it was at this point that things started becoming very
strange. No-one seemed very interested in the story we had stumbled on.
Apparently, the idea that the roles of the good-guys and bad guys had been
reversed was too much: Armenians slaughtering Azeris?
"You are suggesting that more people have died in one attack in Karabakh
than the total number we have reported killed over the past four years?"
said the BBC's Moscow correspondent when I tipped him on the slaughter.
"That's impossible."
"Take a look at Reuters!"
"There's nothing on the wire."
Indeed. While Elif Kaban was churning out copy on her portable telex,
nothing was appearing on the wires. Either someone was spiking copy, or was
rolling it into larger, anodyne regional reports of 'conflicting
allegations'. To be fair, the government and press in Baku didn't exactly
assist in supporting our reporting. While we were off in Agdam trying to get
out the news, the presidential spokesman was claiming that Xodjali's scrappy
defenders had beaten back an Armenian attack and suffered only two dead.
Just a regular night in Mountainous Karabakh. We knew differently, but it
was the three of us against the Azerbaijani state lie machine.
Finally, I got a line through to the Moscow bureau of the Washington Post
and said I wanted to file a story. The staffers there were to busy to take a
dictation, but reluctantly patched me through to the foreign desk in
Washington when I insisted. I used 477 as the number of dead, as religiously
reported to Imam Sadikov, and was dragged over the coals by editors: where
did I get this number from when Baku was still reporting that only two had
died? Had I seen all the bodies? What about a little balance? The Armenian
press was reporting a 'massive Azeri offensive.' Why wasn't that in my
report?
I was about to answer that this bit of information was not in my report for
the very good reason that it had not happened when the first Kristal missile
crashed into Agdam, about a mile a away from the government guest house I
was calling from. Then came others and when one crashed into the building
next door and blew out all the windows in our downtown dacha we thought it
best to get off the phone and into the basement before we were blown to
smithereens.
After about an hour of huddling under mattresses we came up for air and
decided it was probably a good idea to leave Agdam. So did about 50,000
other people, and we discovered ourselves in the middle of a mass exodus of
trucks, cars, horses and people on bicycles, all trying to flee East.
***
I broke the story about the Xodjali massacre with a February 27, world
exclusive on an inside page in the Washington Post. This was followed with a
'European' front page of the London Sunday Times. By then, the international
hack-pack had started parachuting in to count the bodies and confirm that
something very awful had happened. The first western reporter to actually
get out into the killing fields and perform the grisly task of checking
documents on the dead was Anatol Lieven of the London Times. His companion
in the task was the late Rory Peck of Frontline News, another cool
professional and dear friend.
Others performed less well. One best nameless reporter from Ajans France
Press arrived in Agdam the night we left and found the city 'quiet,'
apparently having confused the silence that followed the missile-induced
exodus of 50,000 people with peacefulness. Still another, while a guest at
my house, abused the confidence of Vafa Gulizade by grossly misquoting him.
At the height of the crisis, Douglas Kennedy, son of Robert, showed up with
a KGB-minder/translator from St. Petersburg, and thought he might do a
little poking around the Front for amusement. After convincing him that his
translator would probably get killed by a mob, Kennedy took my advice and
hired two local lads, and then refused to pay them.
The government of Azerbaijan, meanwhile, had performed a complete about-face
on the issue. The same people who had remained unavailable during the early
days of the crisis were suddenly asking me to provide numbers of foreign
correspondents in Moscow whom they could invite down, at government expense,
to report on the massacre.
I did not react very well. I almost physically assaulted the presidential
press secretary, Rasim Agaev, and publicly accused him of lying. The
spokesman was not pleased and began a rumor that I was an Armenian spy sent
to Xodjali to ferret out 'military secrets' during my January visit to the
doomed town. I was temporally detained thanks to that charge, and started to
slid into a very bad mood. When I was released I went downtown and found
myself sitting around a commercial shop with a bunch of black marketeers,
vaguely waiting for rubles to arrive in exchange for my dollars, when the
whole thing hit me and hit me hard.
The evening streets were still filled with smiling shoppers, apparently
oblivious or even indifferent to the fate of the citizens of Xodjali. It was
the same men in leather jackets and the same women with far too much rouge
on their cheeks and they were all smiling and laughing and parading and I
have to say I hated them all. Maybe they didn't know what I did. Maybe they
knew but didn't care lest it drive them insane. It was not clear and neither
was my brain.
I canceled the dollar deal, walked out of the shop and wandered the streets.
I think it rained, but I cannot be sure. I wandered and wandered, unable to
stop anywhere or see or talk to anyone for hours and hours. "Ha ha," someone
cackled, as they leaned toward their gal, or turned on the key to their car.
"Ho ho," someone else chortled as they lurched out of a Komisyon shop,
bottle of Finnish vodka under the arm.
I wanted to slash their tires, smash their noses, burn their houses-do
something, and violently.
I did nothing but wander the streets and avoid humanity. It was better like
that. Then I got home I sat down and poured myself a long drink and drank it
and Hicran asked me where I'd been.
"Xodjali," someone said in a voice I didn't know. I was there with the
ghosts in a dumpy town with no food to speak of or water to wash and all the
people I knew or had known there were dead dead dead and I just started to
cry and cry and cry.
***
There weren't too many bodies. Most were still in the hills, waiting for the
higher temperatures of spring for rot to set. Some, the few, were being
spaded into the shallow ground of the growing Martyrs' Cemetery across from
the parliament building in Baku. One of those was Alef Khadjiev. I liked to
think of him as a friend because we had consumed a few drinks together. A
jocular cop with a big swagger and smile, Alef had managed to galvanize the
Xodjali community around him in the belief that despite the odds and an
almost total lack of support from Baku they could hang on and survive. But
now Alef Khadjiev was dead. He had bought a bullet through the brain and
after rotting for a week in the mountains of the Black Garden his body was
bought for 100 liters of gasoline and then brought back to Baku to be buried
with military honors.
Despite the proximity of the parliament across the street no-one from the
government came to the funeral and maybe that was out of good taste because
had they been there, whispering eulogies about courage and fortitude, Alef,
the hero and then martyr of Xodjali, might have broken free of the bonds of
death and climbed out of his grave and strangled the hypocrites with his own
cold hands. He was that sort of guy.
But they weren't there and the funeral procession was small because Alef was
a native of Xodjali and all or at least most of the would-be mourners were
either dead or had become refugees, and had to be brought to Baku by truck
or bus or train for the last rites.
The exception was Alef's widow, Gala, a chubby Russian girl with a hint of a
mustache who lived in Baku. We had met in Agdam in the aftermath of the
massacre and she refused to believe that her husband was dead. Aside from an
overwhelming sense of grief she was frightened out of her wits, wondering
how she could live without him.
"I'm just a Russian, a Russian!" she cried. "And now everyone looks at me
with hatred in their eyes!" That was in Agdam when anyone who wasn't
speaking Azeri was indeed being looked at through the evil eye. I gave her
my telephone number in Baku and told her to call if there was anything I
could do. She called a few days later, babbling into the phone.
"Tomas," she wailed. "Alef is here."
At first I thought a miracle of mistaken identity had occurred and that Alef
was still alive. But Gala was only calling to tell me that Alef's remains
had been recovered in an exchange with the Armenians for several dozen
gallons of gasoline, and then been shipped to Baku for burial. It was tough
for me to understand her Russian on the telephone and probably a lot tougher
for her to have to pick up the phone at all. But she stayed coherent long
enough to give me her address and the time of the funeral procession. I
went, not knowing what to expect: A week old cadaver in the living room?
Mutilated like others? Scalped like some? I got in a taxi and traveled
through a wasteland of hissing, blue and pink stuff-belching pipes of the
oil refining area of Baku, driving over streets that had seemingly never
seen repair. We drove and drove and it was a drive though an utterly
depressing landscape, the sort that no-one ever sees, or admits to having
seen: broken, diseased and bad. It was as much a symbol of the rapacity and
ugliness of the regime in Baku as the corpses in Agdam had been. How can you
allow people to live and die like this?
Complicating my dark mood was the fact that the Azeri taxi driver only
wanted to make jokes, and in Russian. I told him what I thought. I told him
I was going to find the funeral of my friend, Alef Khadjiev, Martyr of
Karabakh, and that all the people of Baku were greedy cowards and that only
the good men died and the filth remained behind. He agreed, refusing to take
any money for the ride. It was his contribution to national defense, or
something.
I got out of the taxi in front of a series of high-rise Soviet-style
buildings-the ones designed so that the toilet is in a separate room from
the sink. Degrading, like everything else around what was the USSR. Walking
through the mourners I saw people I knew or at least recognized and embraced
them. Then I saw Gala. She was standing in back of a truck carrying the
flag-draped coffin and holding the hand of her smiling child who was still
oblivious to what had happened to her father. I said something stupid like
'be strong.' I tried to plant a hand-extended kiss on the coffin perched on
the back of the truck but I couldn't reach it and decided against climbing
up on the truck and just waited for the procession to proceed. There were
plenty of people crying. Everyone but me. My eyes were dry; I don't know
why. Then someone somewhere responsible for formalities gave the word and
the column started out toward the Martyrs' Cemetery in the heights above
Baku. The funeral train in was the same as my journey out, although the
route was different: another broken road leading through another industrial
wasteland. It was Alef's route to anywhere, nowhere, death. We arrived at
the Shehidler Xiyabani, or Martyrs' Lane cemetery, the place where victims
of the Soviet army crack-down on January 20th, 1990 were buried in a long
line along a granite wall shaded by dwarf Cyprus trees and pine.
I had visited the cemetery before and I have visited it since but it was
different this time. I wasn't there as a journalist covering the event or
even a political/cultural tourist. I was there as a mourner, mourning Alef
Khadjiev, the most recent addition to the second tier of graves, where the
dates of death are different than in the first row. There was no third road,
then. a place that would and will continue to grow. Alef's was the 127th
grave then, a hole in the ground surrounded by freshly dug earth. His casket
was lifted down from the truck and I joined the pall-bearers as they hoisted
it on their shoulders and brought Alef's remains down the line as a local
man of religion recited the 'Fatiha', or Muslim creed of faith. This was odd
because I was not sure whether Alef was a Muslim except in the formal sense
of the word. He never expressed anything approaching piety to me. When he
was alive he was a drinking man, although he didn't smoke. This was really
odd, because Azeris usually smoke all the time, even at funerals. And the
strangest thing about Alef was that he certainly didn't like Turks. He once
told me that he had found too many 'Made In Turkey' labels in the trash cans
of Stepanakert to believe in any pan-Turkic ideal.
I was thinking thought like this because I was remembering, which is what
you are supposed to do when you punch bodies in the ground. Alef Khadjiev
was about to become the first of a whole string of people I knew who died
violently over the next few years, so he got more thought than most. Alef's
wife Gala and her Russian relatives were confused by the ritual placement of
the body, the pious incantations and the fact that the week-old corpse had
to be lifted out of the casket to be put in the hole dug in the muddy
ground. They put the body in. An honor guard clicked their heels, slapped
dummy slugs in their Kaleshnikovs, and let off three volleys. The empty
shells fell clattering on the granite walkway. I picked up one and put it in
my pocket. Then the family and intimate friends began covering the body with
dirt and the wailing really began. Women ripped their cheeks with their
nails and men sobbed last regards. I was invited to say something into the
grave but declined. I had quite a bit to say but I didn't want to say it,
even in a language no one would understand. Cultural differences and all. I
would do it differently today.
Then another, larger funeral procession started moving down Martyrs' Row.
They were heading for the shallow grave next to Alef's. It was the corner
spot and the next corpse would start a new row, even then being dug among
the dwarf Cyprus trees in anticipation for the next to die in the Black
Garden, that horrible place called Karabakh. More young men would soon lie
here and their numbers would soon exceed all those killed at Xodjali and the
events of February 25th and 26th, 1992 would soon become just a detail, just
another grim statistic in the on-going litany of death and destruction in
Karabakh, the Black Garden.
I swore I would remember Alef and all the others, whose names I never knew
but whose faces were etched on my memory forever. Yes, I would remember
Xodjali.
It was a dump. But now it was dead
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
>
>
> Guray Acar wrote:
>
> > REAL wrote:
> >
> > > WolfWolf wrote:
> > >
> > > > European Council rejects demand to open Hagia Sophia as a church
> > >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> > >
> > > What was HAGIA SOPHIA orginally built as?
> > >
> > > A Church.
> >
> > You mean before 1453 .. Things have slightly changed since that day you
> > know.. Or perhaps that's what you can't get to accept .. :)) ..
> >
> > Your arrogance is amazing..
>
> arrogance? I think you are dreaming words up in the air. All I pointed out
was that
> Hagia Sophia was built as a church. Stating a fact is arrogance? Oh what
arrogance
> to say a truth you do not want to hear. After 1453 when the Ottoman Empire
attacked
> the city and captured it, with the rape, looting and pillage that occured
it was
> converted to a mosque by the conquerors and now a museum.
Well, well - dear idiot. May we make you a honest proposal?
The Mosque of Córdoba - once the biggest mosque in the Islamic world - was
brutally desecrated and converted into a church (yes, church - not museum).
Now unREAL the Liar will start a campaign for restitution of the holy place
to its original use.
Once the Mosque of Córdoba is shining again in its historic splendour, we
will consider the future use of Aya Sophia.
WolfWolf
The European
T C
sovereignty, that's the reason the US constitution places treaties as
just below the constitution in inviolability (this also includes the
constitutional amendments as part of the constitution). I thought your
comment about arrogance was because he was placing himself above the
court, this would have been an acceptable reason to me.
Guray Acar
What aspects exactly ? That's a very dodgie issue. EU should
let herself be used as a tool for Greek nationalists to change
the history.
REAL
Guray Acar wrote:
> What aspects exactly ? That's a very dodgie issue. EU should
> let herself be used as a tool for Greek nationalists to change
> the history.
Change what history??? Which "nationalists"????
BE SPECIFIC.
You are the one who wants to conveniently forget everything pre 1453.
REAL
> Your arrogance comes from your pretension as if Istanbul and
> Aya Sofya still belongs to you.. Get it ?? ..
I asked you to substantiate your claims and all I have got from you
here are more claims.
Alleged "pretentions" you claim now.
> Istanbul not
> Konstantinople.. Aya Sofya not Hagia Sofia... My land, my
> city, not yours....
Who said such things?
The names of the building is HAGIA SOPHIA. I told you what it means in
Greek, it was the Church of the Holy Wisdom.. what does it mean in
Turkish? Do you also know what Istanbul means?
http://www.byzantium1200.org/hagia.html
Copyright © A.Tayfun ?NER
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Hagia_Sophia.html
Hagia Sophia
Model Viewing Instructions
Details
> And please don't add any "rape, massacre" stories in the invasion
> of Istanbul for your own convenience..
Stories??? Oh really what happened in those days after the conquest of
the city? and thereafter.. where are the Greeks in Istanbul NOW?????
You really should learn some history.
Heard of religious seriat law?
Mehmed had, long before the actual siege, realized he would not be
able to conquer Constantinople using only conventional methods. A
significant reason for the victory of the Ottomans in 1453 was the use
of cannons or employing the gunpowder against the strength of the
walls. The might of his army consisted of a large fleet of war
vessels, an army of about 150 000 men, including 12 000
janissaries--soldiers taken as little children from their families
(even from families of infidels) and specially trained in military
skills to serve as the elite army of the sultan.
There were 50 000 soldiers as regular army and the rest were
irregulars and camp followers. The determination of Mehmed to conquer
the city should not be overlooked. The Sultan knew that if he does not
manage to make a successful assault on the city soon, new
reinforcements would come as did the four Genoese galleys that broke
the blockade of his ships and brought provisions from Chios to the
city. This is why he did not waste his time and decided that the final
assault would be made on May 29th after the bombardment made serious
breaches in the walls at three points.
Before the fatal for the people of Constantinople day, in a speech to
his army leaders he said: "I give it [Constantinople] over to you to
pillage, to seize its incalculable treasure of men, women, and boys,
and everything that adorns it. You will henceforward live in great
happiness and leave great wealth to your children. The great gain to
all the sons of Othman would be the conquest of a city whose fame was
great throughout the world. The greater its renown, the greater would
be the glory of taking it by assault. A great city which had always
been their enemy, which had always looked upon them with a hostile
eye, which in every way had sought to destroy the Turkish power, would
come into their possession. The door would be open to them by its
capture to conquer the whole of the Greek Empire."
The speech of Mehmed II before the day of the final assault recorded
by the historian Christobolus. Quoted by Lord Eversley, The Turkish
Empire. Its Growth And Decay , pp. 81-82
Do you know who Kritoboulos was???
A final instance will bring us down to the very end of the Byzantine
Empire, which slowly contracted, under the continued assaults of the
Turks, until the Empire consisted only of a small strip of territory
about the capital itself, which finally was captured in 1453. The fall
of Constantinople is described by several contemporary Greek writers,
but the account which is in many ways the most remarkable is that of
Kritoboulos of Imbros. Kritoboulos, a prominent citizen of his native
island, had held important public offices in the Byzantine
administration before the final campaign of the Turks which resulted
in the capture of Constantinople. When, some time after 1453, the
Turks occupied Imbros, Kritoboulos, like a number of his compatriots,
decided to enter the Turkish service; this meant, among other things,
that he would be able to do what he could for his fellows who had
perforce to remain in Greece and Anatolia under the Turks, since they
had nowhere to go. Like other distinguished public figures of the
time, Kritoboulos was a man of letters. Some time after his entry into
the service of the conquerors, Kritoboulos wrote, in Greek, a history
of the conquests of the Turkish Sultan, Mehmed, covering the period
1451-1467, the central episode being, naturally, the capture of
Constantinople. 24
There can of course be no doubt that at least a part of Kritoboulos'
motive was to please his master, but he does also profess, at least, a
wish to leave a permanent record of the events (and presumably, though
he does not say this explicitly, a sample of his own literary skill).
Other Greek writers, not in the Turkish service, had written about the
same events, but none of them had wished to portray the last days of
the Byzantine Empire from the standpoint of a systematic account of
the Turkish operations. This Kritoboulos undertook to do, and as his
medium he thought it fitting to write in the style of the greatest of
the ancient Greek historians, Thucydides, using not only Thucydides'
prose style but his technical vocabulary and the ancient place names
(which were of course no longer in current use), so that the Turkish
troops are presented in the guise of the soldiers of the Peloponnesian
War. Kritoboulos' contemporary, the Greek historian Laonikos
Chalkondyles, who wrote in Italy after the fall of Constantinople,
likewise described the coming of the Turks and the loss of
Constantinople; and Chalkondyles, while it was his purpose to portray
what he saw as the beginning of a new era, elected to write in the
manner of Herodotus and Thucydides. It has been well said, in fact,
that he thought of himself as the Herodotus of the fifteenth century.
The writing of history to Kritoboulos, Chalkondyles, and their readers
still called -for the standards set by the greatest of the Greek
historians.
The Sultan cannot have known much about Thucydides, and it is
difficult to believe that Mehmed the Conqueror really appreciated the
compliment of having his own deeds described in the terms of classical
Greek warfare. It can have been only Kritoboulos himself, and those
Greeks who would read his work, to whom the style of this composition
would have real meaning with respect to the Byzantine tradition. The
author doubtless hoped that the work would form a permanent monument
to his name, and he probably wrote not only to commemorate the
Sultan's conquests, but to immortalize his own literary achievement.
The Byzantine Church and the Presentness of the Past By Glanville
Downey
REAL
WolfWolf wrote:
> "REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3CA7CE5F...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com...
> >
> >
> > Guray Acar wrote:
> >
> > > REAL wrote:
> > >
> > > > WolfWolf wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > European Council rejects demand to open Hagia Sophia as a church
> > > >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> > > >
> > > > What was HAGIA SOPHIA orginally built as?
> > > >
> > > > A Church.
> > >
> > > You mean before 1453 .. Things have slightly changed since that day you
> > > know.. Or perhaps that's what you can't get to accept .. :)) ..
> > >
> > > Your arrogance is amazing..
> >
> > arrogance? I think you are dreaming words up in the air. All I pointed out
> was that
> > Hagia Sophia was built as a church. Stating a fact is arrogance? Oh what
> arrogance
> > to say a truth you do not want to hear. After 1453 when the Ottoman Empire
> attacked
> > the city and captured it, with the rape, looting and pillage that occured
> it was
> > converted to a mosque by the conquerors and now a museum.
>
> Well, well - dear idiot. May we make you a honest proposal?
>
> The Mosque of Cσrdoba - once the biggest mosque in the Islamic world - was
> brutally desecrated and converted into a church (yes, church - not museum).
> Now unREAL the Liar will start a campaign for restitution of the holy place
> to its original use.
This has NOTHING to do with the Ottoman Empire.
Take your diversions elsewhere troll.
> Once the Mosque of Cσrdoba is shining again in its historic splendour, we
> will consider the future use of Aya Sophia.
>
> WolfWolf
> The European
Who is "we" you so called "european".
Go join your fellow Grey Wolves elsewhere.
REAL
Grand Sen~or wrote:
I did not dispute Hagia Sophia remaining as it is, I just pointed out that it was orginally a church, the most
important one for Orthodox Christians in fact.
I did look up the Grand Mosque of Spain and found this information on it.
756
The ruling Umayyad dynasty in Damascus gives way to the Abbasids from Bagdad. Abd ar-Rahman (an Umayyad) flees to
Egypt and eventually to Spain where he ousts the governor and appoints himself emir. His reign sees the beginning of
the construction of the great mosque in Cordoba, the quelling of a number of rebellions, a peace treaty with the
Asturians and perhaps most importantly, the beginning of a Muslim society and culture in Spain that is independent
from Damascus. "Al-Andalus," as the region is called, begins to take on a life of its own.
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/santiago/text.html
On the other hand I would also not dispute the Church of Hagia Sophia being a church again and the Grand Mosque of
Spain being a Mosque again. But what is most important above all is that the religious freedom and human rights of
ALL are respected.
REAL
Constantinos Catsoulis wrote:
> Hagia Sofia stoped being a church because in 1453 belonged to the sect
> that wanted the union of the two churches.This is why the Othomans
> closed it. They didn't close all the churches! They even made
> Scholarios, a Greek hating man, the Patriarch right after the taking
> of Constantinople.
The fall of Constantinople and the death of its Emperor were very soon interpreted
as the fulfilment of prophecies of one kind or another. The monk Gennadios, who had
caused the Emperor so much trouble, and whose name was not mentioned in dispatches
during the defence of the city, was taken prisoner with his fellow monks and sold
into slavery by the Turks. The Sultan Mehmed was well briefed about the religious
dissension among the now defeated Orthodox Christians. He knew that
many of them openly attributed their defeat to the union of Florence; and he knew
that the unionist Patriarch Gregory ??? had abandoned if he had not forfeited his
office. In his capacity as successor to the Christian Roman Emperor in
Constantinople the Sultan felt bound to appoint a new Patriarch, who would be
answerable to him for the conduct of all Christians in his dominions. His choice
fell on George Scholarios, the monk Gennadios. He was generally respected by
the Orthodox and particularly acceptable to the Sultan as one would could be relied
upon to denounce any moves that the western Christians might make to upset the
course of history. A search was made and Gennadios was found and brought to
Constantinople where the Sultan invested him as Patriarch with all the traditional
ceremony proper to the occasion, in January 1454.
The Death Of Constantine
From: Donald M. Nicol, The Immortal Emperor, Cambridge Univ. Press, Canto edition,
1992 - ISBN
0 521 41456 3 © Cambridge U.P. - 1. Runciman, Fall of Constantinople, pp. 154-7
REAL
Guray Acar wrote:
> I am not aware of this things you just said.. As far as I know, it
> was an Islamic tradition to convert the largest temple in a newly
> invaded city/town to a mosque.. Hagia Sofia happened to be the
> biggest temple in the city...
Actually it is one of the most important churches for Orthodox Christians,
if not the most.
> I don't think it is a particularly nice
> thing to do.. But, hell, I don't think it is nice to invade in the first
> place..
Of course, but things like that cannot be changed. It is history now.
However what is happening in the present should be prevented.. perhaps some
action made at last for recent events that still effect human beings. Such
as violations of the Lausanne and other international treaties.
INSTEAD OF AN INTRODUCTION
Brussels, February 1994
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear reader,
In this publication we have attempted to piece together a story, a picture,
a mosaic from various scattered items which have come to light from time to
time.
If you are a person of Greek descent, born in Constantinople, even if you
are a Turkish citizen, and your property has been officially described as
"Yunan Mali - Greek estate", then you are very unfortunate - because in
accordance with the "Secret" Decree of 1964, you do not have the right to
carry out any act of transfer of your property, any purchase or sale, any
donation or exchange.
But your misfortunes do not stop there. Although the 'Secret' Decree made no
reference to rights of inheritance, it has, precisely because it is 'secret'
prompted the Turkish courts in their decisions to circumvent the right of
inheritance. The result has been that the Greeks of Constantinople, and even
their natural heirs, have lost their estates.
In this day and age, the Greeks of Constantinople are deprived of this
natural right, the right of inheritance. This is not a case of acts which
have been committed "by right of revolution", or of judicial error or of
questions of law. This is a systematic policy of the Turkish State, which
has for thirty years been influencing or dictating the decisions of the
Turkish courts, monitoring 'from house to house' the removal from Greek
hands of the estates of the Greeks of Constantinople.
In this day and age, as a result of the remissness and complacency of many
Greek governments - but also of public opinion - the overwhelming majority
of the Constantinople Greeks who are in Greece are disillusioned and do not
intend even to lay claim through the courts, or no longer have the economic
means of laying claim to that which is a natural and fundamental human right
- a right, moreover, which also stems from the Treaty of Lausanne and the
Associatuion Agreement between the EC and Turkey.
In this day and age, Turkey is attempting to distract attention from its
extensive operations against the Kurds and the unwelcome economic and social
realities at home by increasing the attacks made by the Turkish Press on
Greece and the utterances of public figures on the dangers threatening from
Greece.
As has been proved from official documents, the Greek Foreign Ministry has
long been aware of the fact that the Turkish courts have continued to give
judgment on and in effect to confiscate Greek property in blatant violation
of the agreement reached at Davos. And yet for some five years it has not
proved able, or rather it has not wished, to raise the problem again and to
bring it to light through the institutions of Europe and the international
community as one more monstrous infringement of human rights and the rights
of minorities on the part of Turkey.
However, I do not believe that the public at large are adequately informed
on this issue, and it is for this reason that we have undertaken this
publication, in the hope that in this way we shall be able to contribute, by
the means which we have at our disposal, to drawing attention to this
problem at home and abroad, in order that justice may be done in a matter
which would seem to be self-evident, but which has proved not to be.
There is a large number of cases currently pending before the Turkish
courts, and even more which have remained unresolved since 1964, in spite of
the fact that Turkey maintains, by means of various forms of legal
casuistry, that they have been closed. Those cases which are described in
some detail in this publication are merely a sample of the prevailing
climate and are indicative of the impasse which has been created.
Our publication is intended to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the
publication of the "Secret" Decree of 1964 and has as its purpose to raise
the consciousness of public opinion in Greece and abroad.
Two things should be stressed in conclusion:
First: Many of the buildings in Constantinople in the ownership of citizens
of Greek origin constitute an architectural treasure. They were built in the
early 20th or the 19th centuries, or even earlier. They are a reminder of
the rich cultural achievements of the Greeks of Constantinople. It is these
marks left by a creative past which the Turkish Government is seeking to
wipe out. And it is on these terms that it seeks to have Constantinople
nominated Cultural Capital of Europe.
Second: We must unyieldingly resist any suggestion or temptation to apply
the theory of "reprisals" of the type "Turkey violates the rights of the
minority in Constantinople, let us violate the rights of the minority in
Thrace ...". The strict implementation of our obligations stemming from the
Treaty of Lausanne, the exercise in practice of the rights which are
embraced by the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and the
United Nations Organisation, and sensitivity on our part to the unresolved
problems of the Muslim minority provide the only path by which it uill be
integrated into Greek society and by which any machinations on the part of
Ankara will be averted, the only way in which the seed of co-operation which
our country has so much need of, and not the seed of hate which others are
seeking to foster, will take root and grow.
Alekos Alavanos
Member of the European Parliament
THE NIGHT OF TERROR IN CONSTANTINOPLE
Under the terms of the agreement regarding the exchange of populations in
the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek population of Constantinople-a
thriving community-and the muslim community residing in Western Thrace were
exempted from the exchange process.
In the beginning of the 20th century there were 300,000 Greeks residing in
Constantinople.
They had managed to survive there despite centuries of oppression and
persecution under the Ottoman yoke. But the Turks were determined to expel
all Greeks from their ancient home using all available means. Thus, the
Turks systematically used the following measures in order to accomplish
their objective :
a) In May 1941, large numbers of young men ranging in age from 18-38. were
conscripted into the Turkish army from the Greek and Armenian communities
The Turkish intention was to exterminate these young men through the
well-known method of <<forced-labour battalions>>. If this extermination
plan was not successful it was due to protests from the Western allies and
the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad in December 1942. Seeing the tides
of war shifting, the Turkish authorities permitted the discharge of these
soldiers.
b) On 11 Noverriber 1942, the Turkish government passed a law regarding
taxation of property of non-muslims, known as the VA RLIK VE RGISI. Through
this !aw non-muslim citiizens had to submit, without the right to appeal, to
were seriously wounded.
to save their lives.
which minority>>. (Survey-15).
---------
Turkey
Istanbul, 25/06/1996 (ANA)
padlocked houses."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
MPA 13 June 1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>
>
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
>
>
> Guray Acar wrote:
>
> > I am not aware of this things you just said.. As far as I know, it
> > was an Islamic tradition to convert the largest temple in a newly
> > invaded city/town to a mosque.. Hagia Sofia happened to be the
> > biggest temple in the city...
>
> Actually it is one of the most important churches for Orthodox Christians,
> if not the most.
It was. Today it is a museum - open to everybody.
Tell us, dear idiot, about the Mosque of Córdoba - once the most important
mosque in the Islamic world until its desacration and architectural
deformation during the inquisition.
WolfWolf
The European
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
>
>
> Constantinos Catsoulis wrote:
>
> > Hagia Sofia stoped being a church because in 1453 belonged to the sect
> > that wanted the union of the two churches.This is why the Othomans
> > closed it. They didn't close all the churches! They even made
> > Scholarios, a Greek hating man, the Patriarch right after the taking
> > of Constantinople.
>
> The fall of Constantinople and the death of its Emperor were very soon
interpreted
> as the fulfilment of prophecies of one kind or another.
Tell us about facts, dear idiot. Not about prophecies.
Tell us about the Mosque of Córdoba - once the most important mosque in the
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
was
> > brutally desecrated and converted into a church (yes, church - not
museum).
> > Now unREAL the Liar will start a campaign for restitution of the holy
place
> > to its original use.
>
> This has NOTHING to do with the Ottoman Empire.
We are speaking about holy places of Islam and Christianity, dear idiot.
> > Once the Mosque of Córdoba is shining again in its historic splendour,
we
> > will consider the future use of Aya Sofya.
> >
> > WolfWolf
> > The European
>
> Who is "we" you so called "european".
WolfWolf is European. Neither yellow, nor blue, nor grey. Simply European.
>
> Go join your fellow Grey Wolves elsewhere.
>
Now, dear idiot, tell us about the merits and credits of your PKK friends.
With their net income of about $3bn 'collected' by the PKK during the last 5
years, how many jobs have they created?
From the 3,000 murders committed by PKK criminals between 1991 and 1995,
being 85% of the victims people of Kurdish origin, how many killers have
been caught and condemned in fair trials?
How many widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers were killed by PKK
criminals are receiving adequate pensions from PKK funds?
How many schools destroyed by PKK groups in their massive deculturization
campaigns have been rebuilt by the terrorists?
How many projects for sustainable development have been sponsored with PKK
funds in their areas of activity?
Where was the solidarity of PKK with earthquake victims, many of them having
been people of Kurdish origin?
How many teachers killed by PKK have been replaced?
How many members of the self-styled 'PKK exile parliament', including the
leaders of the gang, have been elected by democratic principles?
Compared with the conditions in Camp X-Ray, how many benefits is enjoying
Abdullah Ocalan in his environment in Imrali island?
Go on, slimy bastard, give us your answers if you can.
You demagogue ...
WolfWolf
The European
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
> Guray Acar wrote:
>
> > Your arrogance comes from your pretension as if Istanbul and
> > Aya Sofya still belongs to you.. Get it ?? ..
>
> I asked you to substantiate your claims and all I have got from you
> here are more claims.
REAL, idiot, you were told where your substantiation is: deep inside your
derrière.
>
> Alleged "pretentions" you claim now.
>
> > Istanbul not
> > Konstantinople.. Aya Sofya not Hagia Sofia... My land, my
> > city, not yours....
>
> Who said such things?
Go to Istanbul - and learn. Get enlightenment.
>
> The names of the building is HAGIA SOPHIA. I told you what it means in
> Greek, it was the Church of the Holy Wisdom.. what does it mean in
> Turkish? Do you also know what Istanbul means?
Exactly: it was.
Today the name is AYA SOFYA. And the use is a MUSEUM.
And Istanbul is also known as THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION.
Do you know what 'civilization' means, you slimy bastard???
WolfWolf
The European
WolfWolf
"REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
>
>
> Guray Acar wrote:
>
> > What aspects exactly ? That's a very dodgie issue. EU should
> > let herself be used as a tool for Greek nationalists to change
> > the history.
>
> Change what history??? Which "nationalists"????
>
> BE SPECIFIC.
>
> You are the one who wants to conveniently forget everything pre 1453.
YOU are the whitewash merchant who conveniently forgets the gory crimes of
the 'businessmen' you are glorifying.
You asked for support for 'businessman' Huseyin Baybasin.
Who is this 'gentleman'?
By request of British, German, Dutch and Turkish authorities INTERPOL issued
an arrest warrant against him.
On 26/10/93 INTERPOL released an alert note about the large-scale heroin
smuggling by Huseyin Baybasin ("The Heroin Empereor"). He was arrested and
condemned in the Netherlands.
From NRC News 27/01/2001:
Eis levenslang tegen Baybasin
Tegen de zelfverklaarde Turks-Koerdische heroïnehandelaar Hüseyin Baybasin
is gisteren in de zwaarbeveiligde Rotterdamse rechtbank een levenslange
gevangenisstraf geëist.
[Lifetime imprisonment ruled by Rotterdam court against the Turkish-Kurdish
heroin dealer H. Baybasin].
http://www.nrc-handelsblad.nl/W2/Nieuws/2001/01/27/Vp/kort.html
Now it's time for unREAL the Liar to reveal his REAL intentions. Who can
ever deserve any credibility with this and other targets in his dirty mind?
WolfWolf
The European
Constantinos Catsoulis
I think you are correct.ne thing I have to add about this man is that
he hated the "Hellenes".He wasn't considering himself Greek.Nobody was
considering the Eastern Roman Empire as a Greek one. Only in our days
they mix Byzantium with Greece.
REAL
WolfWolf wrote:
> "REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3CA9838B...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com...
> >
> >
> > Guray Acar wrote:
> >
> > > What aspects exactly ? That's a very dodgie issue. EU should
> > > let herself be used as a tool for Greek nationalists to change
> > > the history.
> >
> > Change what history??? Which "nationalists"????
> >
> > BE SPECIFIC.
> >
> > You are the one who wants to conveniently forget everything pre 1453.
>
> YOU are the whitewash merchant who conveniently forgets the gory crimes of
> the 'businessmen' you are glorifying.
Again you claim the same old lies with NO PROOF.
>
> You asked for support for 'businessman' Huseyin Baybasin.
>
WHERE? SHOWS US THE FULL POST
>
> Who is this 'gentleman'?
>
> By request of British, German, Dutch and Turkish authorities INTERPOL issued
> an arrest warrant against him.
> On 26/10/93 INTERPOL released an alert note about the large-scale heroin
> smuggling by Huseyin Baybasin ("The Heroin Empereor"). He was arrested and
> condemned in the Netherlands.
> From NRC News 27/01/2001:
> Eis levenslang tegen Baybasin
> Tegen de zelfverklaarde Turks-Koerdische heroοnehandelaar Hόseyin Baybasin
> is gisteren in de zwaarbeveiligde Rotterdamse rechtbank een levenslange
> gevangenisstraf geλist.
> [Lifetime imprisonment ruled by Rotterdam court against the Turkish-Kurdish
> heroin dealer H. Baybasin].
> http://www.nrc-handelsblad.nl/W2/Nieuws/2001/01/27/Vp/kort.html
>
> Now it's time for unREAL the Liar to reveal his REAL intentions. Who can
> ever deserve any credibility with this and other targets in his dirty mind?
>
> WolfWolf
> The European
I have already answered this so called "european"
Again the WolfWolf troll raises the SAME CLAIMS.
Claims already answered and proving that WolfWolf is none other than a lying
troll.
WolfWolf lost credibility long ago and even more recently.
Subject:
Re: No US concession to the PKK
WolfWolf wrote:
> "REAL" <traprea...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3CA5CA25...@SPAMTRAPPEDhotmail.com...
> > What of Turkish Terror?
>
> What of REAL terror?
Your "answer" just shows what you really are. Hardly "european" as you say at
every post but one of those apologists that never looks at Turkeys oprressions
against it's minorities and Turks like Akin Birdal that speak up for them.
>
>
> >
> > Tell us where the PKK was when Turkey banned the Kurdihs language and
> called
> > Kurds "Mountain Turks".
>
> WHERE WAS REAL WHEN PKK KILLED MERCILESS CHILDREN, TEACHERS, WOMEN AND
> VISITORS?
Again the same idiocies from you. Again blaming the PKK for everything yet no
mention answer from you. This is because you know that Turkish state terrorism
began befor ethe PKK even existed. It began in the 1920's when predatory Turkish
administratros sought to Turkify all of Turkey minorities and to destroy them.
The PKK formed in the 1970's. The PKK was a response to Turkish aggression. That
is why you NEVER wish to discuss what happened BEFORE the PKK.
You are just another Turkish apologist wnating us to be ignorat of Turkeys past
and present actions.
> WAS HE ALSO IN THE MOUNTAINS?
> THE REAL FOOL ON THE HILL???
>
> Was he there with his friend - the so-called 'businessmann'????
Friend? You are making claims that simply are not true. I posted an article on
him from Kurdmedia.com. This makes him my "friend"???? Just because you attack
every post that shows the facts because it is not palatable to your Grey Wolf
ideology. The same Grey Wolves that tried to assasinate the pope, the same Grey
Wolves that killed leftists, Kurds, Cypriots and Turks that they disagreed with.
You can't do anything on usenet to me, only attempt to confuse and distort the
readers. Where is your substaantiation for ANY of your claims??? It is NO-WHERE.
I have asked your for substantiation many times and all youcan say is that my
denials are proof. NO, denials are not proof.
and yes I can prove that you say such absurd things:
> Again - no words about the countless victims of the drugs marketed by
> Huseyin Baybasin, the "Heroin Empereor" - the trader of death and misery!!!
> No words about the huge wealth accumulated by this 'businessman'. Ah - tax
> free, of course!!
> No words about the blood on the hands of this 'businessman'.
> No words about his cynism - and inhuman cruelty.
All of this yet no substantiation for any of it! WolfWolf troll expects us to
take his word for it.
> Instead of this - only weaseling out and whitewashing, whining about the
> problems of this scoundrel with his toothpaste.
> Did REAL - in his unlimited hypocricy - ever consider the situation of the
> drug addicts, victims of his 'businessmann'???
> Of course not - he would have seen that some cannot even afford toothpaste -
> they are using sand instead!!
> And what is unREAL telling us? That his 'businessman' didn't like his cell -
> where he has more comfort than the earthquake victims.
>
All of this yet no substantiation for any of it! WolfWolf troll expects us to
take his word for it.
>
> Now who is this 'gentleman' Huseyin Baybasin?
>
> By request of British, German, Dutch and Turkish authorities INTERPOL issued
> an arrest warrant against him.
> On 26/10/93 INTERPOL released an alert note about the large-scale heroin
> smuggling by Huseyin Baybasin ("The Heroin Empereor"). He was arrested and
> condemned in the Netherlands.
> From NRC News 27/01/2001:
> Eis levenslang tegen Baybasin
> Tegen de zelfverklaarde Turks-Koerdische hero?nehandelaar H?seyin Baybasin
> is gisteren in de zwaarbeveiligde Rotterdamse rechtbank een levenslange
> gevangenisstraf ge?ist.
> [Lifetime imprisonment ruled by Rotterdam court against the Turkish-Kurdish
> heroin dealer H. Baybasin].
> http://www.nrc-handelsblad.nl/W2/Nieuws/2001/01/27/Vp/kort.html
>
> Now it's time for unREAL the Liar to reveal his REAL intentions. Who can
> ever deserve any credibility with this and other targets in his dirty mind?
All of this yet no substantiation for any of it! WolfWolf troll expects us to
take his word for it.
It is up to people ot make up their own minds about Huseyin Baybasin, not you to
make it up for them. Here is information on him.
Kurdish businessman Huseyin Baybasin walks out of Dutch courtroom
http://www.kurdmedia.com/reports.asp?id=288
KurdishMedia.com 04 February 2001
Huseyin Baybasin (45) held for nearly three years in a Dutch high-security
prison on the basis of allegations made against him by the Turkish government
walked out of a Dutch courtroom Friday, 2 February, declaring the case against
him a farce and the court prejudiced from the outset.
Huseyin Baybasin offered evidence in his defence during the first days of the
trial which the judge refused to have heard in court regarding fabricated
telephone tap conversations. Baybasin also insisted on his innocence concerning
all the charges made against him by the Turkish state as he has done from the
outset. He also accused the prosecutor of being in league with the Turkish state
and of attempting to prejudicially influence the trial and the trial judge.
Flagrant provocation throughout hearing
Posing as reporters individuals thought to be Dutch intelligence operatives were
flushed out by Kurdish observers at the trial when these persons attempted to
brief bona fide journalists by providing them with false information about the
facts of the case intended to pervert reporting of the case in the media. After
having been exposed they were not seen in court again.
On Thursday - the day before Huseyin Baybasin finally walked out in affront -
all the Kurdish observers seated in the gallery were arrested and accused of
having planned to bust Baybasin out. They were released two days later.
In response to this accusation the observers stated that this was idea was
utterly nonsensical as no one could possibly have entered the court with any
kind of arms, the security precautions having been so stringent.
Even their belts and watches were removed beforehand.
Huseyin Baybasin himself arrived at court attened by a fleet of Security
personnel. The team which had behaved courteously towards him on the first day
were replaced on the second day by an entirely different team who, according to
eye witnesses and Baybasin himself sought to provoke him by verbal abuse as also
by pushing and shoving him as he walked ahead of them. Baybasin is seeking to
bring a complaint.
On Friday, the fifth and final day of the aborted hearing, Huseyin Baybasin and
his lawyer withdrew in dismay saying the hearing was not proceeding fairly and
lawfully. The case was adjourned.
Damaging allegations of state corruption in Turkey Huseyin Baybasin has brought
damaging accusations against the Turkish state contesting that his erstwhile
involvement in the drugs traffick (for which he had served a sentence) and with
which he broke thereafter - was at the behest of the inmost circle of the
Turkish government of the day. Many of his early revelations were verified in
the Susurluk scandal once it broke and the enquiry which followed although much
still remains classified knowledge today, prominent participants remaining in
power throughout the government and business sector.
Details of Huseyin Baybasin s past, earlier published allegations as well as the
facts behind his last three years in detention in Holland have been made public
in a book written from Baybasin s notes by the late Mahmut Baksi, under the
title Teyre baz - Kurdish Businessman Huseyin Baybasin, published in Istanbul
soon after the arrest of Abdullah Ocalan. The book has since been banned, its
publishers charged and Baybasin himself sentenced in absentia by a Turkish court
to 12 years on account of it.
Baybasin refuses to lie down and be quiet. Further startling revelations can be
anticipated.
http://www.kurdmedia.com/reports.asp?id=764
Do the Dutch authorities want to murder Baybasin, imprisoned Kurdish
Businessman?
KurdishMedia.com 09 February 2002
Mr Huseyin Baybasin (45) has been held for over four years in a Dutch
high-security prison on the basis of allegations made against him only by the
Turkish regime. He has always rejected these allegations and insisted that he is
innocent.
Mr Baybasin was arrested in 27 March 1998 in the Netherlands.
This was not just against Mr Baybasin. It was a rapid attack against all
influential Kurdish families and figures by Turkish state. Most members of
Baybasin family were rounded it up all over Europe, their safe-haven, on the
request of the Turkish state.
Mr Huseyin Baybasin s brother, Abdullah Baybasin, was also arrested in London,
on March 1998, on the request of the Turkish state, but the British authorities
could not establish Turkish claim; after eight months of detention, freed Mr
Abdullah Baybasin. Abdullah is already a victim of the Turkish regime. He was
shot and, as a result, paralysed. Despite his disability, the Turkish regime has
attempted to eliminate him again and again. The Dutch authorities however solely
relied on Turkish regime s allegation to sentence Mr Huseyin Baybasin, and
rejected all independent evidences.
Mr Baybasin was hospitalised on Monday morning (4 February 2002) by the Dutch
authorities to investigate food-poising allegation. Friends and family of Mr
Baybasin have accused the Dutch authorities of poisoning Mr Baybasin in prison.
Food poisoning affairs
The food poisoning had come to light when one of Mr Baybasin s relatives visited
him in prison in January 2001, only to be shocked. Mr Baybasin, who is normally
very cheerful and lively, was found confused, not functioning properly and in an
extremely poor health state.
Family members tried through legal systems to hospitalise Mr Baybasin for
examination, but the Dutch authorities refused until now, at nearly a year after
the evidence. The question that the Dutch authorities need to answer is that why
they waited so long for a simple examination.
If Mr Baybasin has been poisoned, after such along time, it is just possible
that the evidence would disappear in his blood, an expert told KurdishMedia.com.
Has Mr Baybasin been poisoned? Let us examine further.
More evidence of poisoning Mr Baybasin in prison has been found as one of the
prison guards, we call him David, told Mr Baybasin in January 2001, that he was
losing his colour, and that he should talk to his lawyer. David was believed to
be a religious man and simply could not accept what was going on against Mr
Baybasin. He realised that Mr Baybasin s life was in danger and suggested that
his toothbrush should be examined. It was suggested that Mr Baybasin s
toothbrush was poisoned in order to kill him slowly. David arrange sending Mr
Baybasin s toothbrush to his lawyer.
The toothbrush was examined by a private laboratory in London. In June 2001, the
result of the test was positive. It was poisoned with a substance that impacted
Mr Baybasin s memory.
Questions for Dutch authorities
Why was Mr Baybasin poisoned? One can only guess. Was he poisoned in order to
not function properly in his trial? It is not clear yet. What is clear, however,
is the security guard on the way to his trial in January 2001 physically and
verbally abused him. Why did the security guard beat up Mr Baybasin on the way
to the trial? Again one can only guess.
Divert Mr Baybasin s attention form court
One may find consistency between these two actions, poisoning and physical
abuse. Perhaps they were conducted to disturb Mr Baybasin and divert his
attention form his court case. Whatever the objectives were, these are illegal
actions and the Dutch authorities are countable for them.
Apart from the toothbrush affair ; there was also the plastic affair -
further evidence that Baybasin s life was in danger. Mr Baybasin consistently
found pieces of plastic in his food and complained to the Supervisory Committee
for Vught Penitentiary Institutions in Vught (Nieuw Vosseveld)
Decisions were made by the sole complaints judge, from the supervisory committee
concerning the written complaint received on March 2001 from Mr Baybasin. This
was the evaluation:
The sole complaints judge has the opinion that the complaint in question cannot
be considered as relating to a decision taken by or on behalf of the director,
as intended in Article 60, section 1 of the Prison Act. The complaint lodged by
the complainant therefore cannot be accepted.
In plain English, the Dutch authorities, or a single judge, decided to take no
action to this complaint.
Questions for Dutch authorities
Was Mr Baybasin poisoned in prison? Were the toothbrush and plastic affairs just
a pack of lies? Did the prison guard, David, lie about attempts on Mr Baybasin s
life? Why does it take nearly a year for Dutch authorities to hospitalise Mr
Baybasin? Do the Dutch authorities really want to murder Mr Baybasin in prison?
We shall examine even further.
Attempt on Baybasin s life physically
However, if Mr Baybasin were murdered, he would not be the only one. Jails
security officers beat a Turkish prisoner, Mr Cemal Guclu, until he died on 15
September 1999. The commitment of murder was not even taken seriously to start
an investigation. The Dutch authorities blamed an English prisoner for Mr Cemal
Guclu s death, allegedly to cover their tracks.
Now it is Mr Baybasin term. A Russian prisoner was allegedly provoked by the
Dutch jail s authority to attack Mr Baybasin, in 1999. The Russian intended to
kill Mr Baybasin, but could not succeed. Later his lawyer took legal action
about this attack, and the Russian prisoner stated that he was provoked by the
Dutch authority to kill Mr Baybsin. However, the Russian prisoners suspiciously
transferred to another jail in another country, Belgium. This is very strange
indeed, to say the least.
Questions for Dutch authorities
Why should a prisoner be transferred to another country, for no good reasons?
According to EBI regime, it is impossible for any prisoner to be transferred to
even jail in Holland. The Dutch authorities need to answer this question.
Turkey wants to eliminate Baybasin
Authorities in Turkey have attempted to assassinate Mr Baybasin twice in - but
both times he was lucky to escape alive. The first assassination attempt was
tried in the beginning of 1997 and the second one was in September of 1997 in
the Netherlands.
He knew they would keep trying to succeed; so Mr Baybasin left to the
Netherlands, where the Dutch authorities were convinced, beyond shadow of doubt
that his life was in danger in Turkey and granted him political asylum.
However, Turkish authorities did not give up.
In Istanbul, a Turkish policeman informed one of Mr Baybasin s relative,
confidentially, that the Turkish state would send their policemen to assassinate
Baybasin, who was running a business in the Netherlands at the time.
Finally, Mr Baybasin observed some unusual activities around him by a group that
was supported by Turkish nationalists in the Netherlands. Mehmet Marsil, who had
spent a long period in the Netherlands, got in touch with Mr Baybasin in 1997.
On the telephone, Marsil identified himself to Mr Baybasin as a needy Kurdish
man, requesting a job. Some time later, one of Mr Baybasin s bodyguards asked
Marsil for his passport. Marsil was then proven to be a Turkish policeman, who
entered the Netherlands with a diplomatic passport. Mr Baybasin immediately
informed Dutch authorities in Rotterdam, but, to everyone s surprise, no action
was taken. The Turkish Embassy in Rotterdam privately sent Marsil back to
Turkey. Soon after Marsil arrived in Turkey, he changed his statement,
complained that Mr Baybasin attempted to kill him.
This shocking news was on Dutch media for long period of time. It can also be
quoted from their TV programs and newspapers.
Dutch media got in touch with Mr Baybasin s former lawyer, Mr Victor Koppe. He
stated: "The person who has informed us is trusted and a science man who is very
well informed about the Turkish people. A diplomatic passport holder, Mustafa
Sahin, from Turkey was sent on 14th of August 1997, by its government to the
Netherlands to assassinate my client. This incident was on Dutch press for a
long period. Dutch government is aware of this attack through to media"
Question for the Dutch authorities
Why was Mehmet Marsil given back to Turkey? If Mr Baybasin wanted to murder
Marsil, then why did he hand him to the Dutch Police Station?
Mr Baybasin s next hearing is on 25 February 2002 and the result is expected on
25 March 2002.
Chronology
1992: Mr. Baybasin fled from Turkey due to his refusal of co-operation with
Turkish government led by Mr Suleyman Demirel, former President, Mrs. Tansu
Ciller, former Prime Minister and Mr. Mehmet Agar, the Interior Minister against
his own Kurdish people.
December 1995. Mr Baybasin was arrested by Dutch authorities, and Turkey
requested his extradition, but the Dutch refused. Mr Baybasin was given
political asylum and released a year later.
1997: The first assassination attempt on Mr Baybasin in the beginning of 1997
and the second one was in September of 1997 in the Netherlands. Mr Baybasin was
warned by the Dutch authorities to leave their country unless he would face the
consequences. Mr Baybasin did not take this warning serious.
1997: The Dutch authorities attributed all Mr Baybasin s family assets to drug
trafficking since Mr Baybasin moved to the Netherlands in the same year. This
asset has been inherited in their family since 1800. Baybasin family is and has
been one of the influential and wealthy families in Turkey.
March 1998: Two brothers of Huseyin Baybasin, Abdullah Baybasin and Sirin
Baybasin, were arrested, together with Mehmet Cetin on in London.
1998: Late Mahmut Baksi, a well-known Kurdish intellect wrote a book containing
many articles about Dutch s behaviour. The book was published in Turkish and
later translated into English. This behaviour of the Netherlands was being
condemned by Kurds and they took several campaigns.
September 1999: the Dutch jails security officer beat Mr Cemal Guclu, a Turkish
prisoner, to death, like many people before him.
December 2000: Mahmut Baksi passed away in exile after fighting off a fatal
disease for long time. Baksi has written a book and several articles in Ozgur
Politika, Turkish por-Kurdish daily, where he criticises the Dutch authorities
for their dirty relationships with Turkish state
June 2000: Ahmet Onal, the owner of the Peri Publishing House, which published
the book by Mahmut Baksi on the memoirs of Huseyin Baybasin, "The Hawk: Kurdish
Businessman Huseyin Baybasin", was taken to court by Turkish regime to face a 27
year sentence. Onal told the court, "For the past 25 years I ve gone from
courtroom to courtroom. In all this time, I ve never once had a weapon in my
hands. I ve been faced with one court case after another purely because of my
belief in democracy. This book is in fact a document of confession. I published
it for the sake of justice and a clean society. I love this country. I published
it with no intent whatsoever of committing the offences with which I am charged.
I am innocent."
January 2001: Mr Baybasin was physically and verbally abused by prison security
guards on his way to the court.
January 2001: Mr Baybasin was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by a Dutch
court without evidence and a fair trial; the only evidence was that of the
Turkish state. Kurdish documents were not translated to be used as evidence.
January 2001: Turkish State has celebrated their victory and thanked the
Netherlands justice department for their effort in imprisoning Mr Baybasin.
September 2001: Ahmet ?nal, the owner of Peri Publishing House, was fined TL 1.9
billion for having published the book "Kurdish Businessman H?seyin Baybasin"
written by Mahmut Baksi, who died last year in exile. Istanbul SSC ruled that
the book violated Article 312/2 ("inciting the people to enmity and hatred".
December 2001: Mr Baybasin has started a hunger strike with 10 other prisoners
to condemn the condition in the jail and their treatments by the Dutch
authorities.
January 2002: Turkish authorities sent a happy new year s card to Mr Baybasin,
as a threat, reminding him he is their victim.
=======
and your pathetic answer for this WolfWolf troll?
WolfWolf wrote:
> Now ask again for your substantiation - you have been told already where it
> is: in your derri?re.
> You slimy bastard ...
So there we have it,. The WolfWolf troll CAN NOT provide ANY SUBSTANTIATION.
Just more of his PKK diatribe and still NO ANSWER as to where the PKK was when
Turkey banned Kurdish language and called them "Mountain Turks"
He knows it is because Turkey's state terrorism began BEFORE THE PKK EVER
EXISTED.
That is why he always mentions the PKK but never what happened before PKK.
He is none other than a Grey Wolf troll who lost his credibility long ago.
REAL
> Terrorism is "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated
> against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents,
> usually intended to influence an audience".
Then this DEFINITELY INCLUDES TURKEY! Please see below for the
substantiation:
<
The Kurdish tribes of Anatolia, which predate the Turkish presence in the
Middle East, sided with Ataturk against the British and Greeks in the early
1920s, but the Turks quickly turned on their Muslim brothers. From 1923 on,
Ataturk's repression of Kurdish nationalism and even Kurdish identity was
savage and predatory. He filled the Kurdish southeast with Turkish
administrators, gave land to Turkish war veterans, forbade the use of Kurdish
language in court, and, most important, banned the native tongue in schools,
effectively denying formal education to Kurdish children. The measures
quickly spurred a Kurdish uprising, led by Sheik Said, which erupted
throughout the southeast in 1925. It was quashed by overwhelming Turkish
force: Ataturk, using the ragtag revolt as a pretext for assuming dictatorial
powers which he never completely relinquished, crushed the Kurdish
insurgents. Sheik Said and 660 of his compatriots were executed, most by
public hanging, and another 7,500 were arrested. Villages were destroyed,
massacres reported. The response was well in excess of the challenge, and the
army's terrorism bred more resistance; individual towns and villages rose up
through the ensuing years. The army's reply was again harsh: hundreds of
villages were razed, thousands of Kurds killed, and perhaps half a million
were deported. The tribal rebellions persisted through the 1930s, the
bloodiest of which (in Dersim, now Tunceli province) may have taken 40,000
lives as a result of army reprisals. Turkish Kurdistan was placed under a
nearly permanent state of martial law and a news blackout.
The basis of the confrontation was Turkish nationalism. The Turkish state
from 1923 onward simply refused to acknowledge that Kurds even existed--they
were known, until the 1990s, as "Mountain Turks." The new mythology of Turks
as founders of the great Asian civilizations neatly folded the Kurds into
that conceit. Scholarly work on Kurdish history was outlawed. A
"Turkification" program was instituted in the southeast, raising the
visibility of Turkish culture, moving Turks into the area, and earnestly
promoting the cult of Ataturk. At the same time, the area, so long a pastoral
and agrarian economy, was steadily impoverished by pogroms, deportations of
Kurdish elites, and the disappearance of the Christian entrepreneurial class.
Chief among the insults was the attack on language, which penetrated beyond
the formal venues of court or schoolroom. The Ankara regime replaced Kurdish
village names with Turkish equivalents, forbade the naming of children with
Kurdish names, and outlawed the singing of Kurdish folk songs. Because only
one Kurd in twenty could speak Turkish in the first years of the Republic,
the denial of their own language was economically devastating.
In the 1960s and 1970s, as David McDowall explains in his excellent Modern
History of the Kurds, the situation became more desperate. Unemployment among
Kurds rose by 150 percent between 1967 and 1977. By the early 1990s, less
than 10 percent of adults in the Kurdish southeast had industrial jobs, and
those tended to be in low-skilled industries. On the large landowners'
estates, peasants would work eleven hours a day for $2. Children--the
fortunate survivors of a 30 percent mortality rate--would work alongside
their parents. Less than a third of the population received any formal
education and less than one in five women attended school.
The demise of viable agrarian life and the growth of urban poor and unskilled
youth radicalized large segments of the Kurdish people--20 percent of
Turkey's population. However varied in social outlook and separated by
tribes, dialects, and rates of assimilation, the Kurds were ripe for
rebellious nationalism. Their chance came with the creation of the PKK in
1974 on the campus of Ankara University. The founder, Abdullah Ocalan,
modeled the PKK on other Marxist liberation movements that employed
revolutionary violence. By 1980, the PKK was poised to respond to the pivotal
event of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict: the September 12 coup.
For the outside world, the coup was a bloodless, temporary measure,
engineered by a "reluctant" military, and essential to eliminating terrorist
threats and restoring order. To the Kurds in southeastern Turkey, the
generals' reign was a new wave of terror and repression, rivaled only by the
sanguinary pogroms of the 1930s. While many Turkish militants of left and
right were prosecuted, vast numbers of Kurdish nationalists were targeted.
The new constitution promulgated by the junta (which remains in force today)
was designed to punish Kurdish nationalism: the mere recognition of a
distinct Kurdish identity was criminalized, and the Kurdish language was
effectively outlawed. The statements by junta leader General Evren at the
time of the coup, which focused on keeping Turkey undivided, and the arrests
and trials of so many prominent Kurds immediately after the military seized
power, clearly exposed the junta's primary, obsessive fear of Kurdish
nationalism.
That nationalism did grow quickly in response to the dictatorship's harsh
measures. From 1984 the PKK became a force to be reckoned with, a genuine
guerrilla movement significantly supported by ordinary Kurdish peasants. What
began as a nuisance to the Turkish state grew over the 1980s into a
large-scale civil war. By 1990, some 300,000 troops were deployed in the
southeast, and an enormous amount of the national budget (with reports
ranging from 25 to 40 percent) was going to support police and military
operations there. In 1992, the government began a policy of forcibly
evacuating villages in order to deprive the PKK of its popular support. Some
3,000 villages have been emptied, and as many as two million Kurds driven
from their homes into shantytowns and overcrowded apartments in Diyarbakir,
Adana, Izmir, and Istanbul--a population of "internally displaced" second in
the world only to Sudan.
At issue was not so much a separate Kurdistan (the PKK dropped this goal in
1993), but cultural rights--principally the right to speak, publish, educate,
and broadcast in Kurdish, aspirations confirmed in an exhaustive survey of
Kurdish attitudes conducted by Ankara University Professor Dogu Ergil in
1995. President Turgut Ozal had granted limited rights to speak Kurdish in
1991, but other cultural freedoms--for example, broadcasting and educating in
Kurdish--were denied. Kurdish activists were also concerned with economic
development in the southeast, which the government had long promised and
never delivered. Firmly in control of the civilian governments' policy toward
the southeast, the military would not allow broader cultural rights or the
emergence of Kurdish political parties. Turkish nationalism, the bedrock
tenet of Kemalism, could not be modified even to accommodate harmless
cultural longing.
This rigidity is especially pernicious. In an insightful essay in Nationalism
and Ethnic Conflict, MIT professor Stephen van Evera presents ten hypotheses
on war and nationalism. One focuses on the content of nationalist ideology:
"Does the ideology of the nationalism incorporate respect for the freedom of
other nationalities," he asks, "or does it assume a right or duty to rule
them?" Those that exclude, he says, are forms of "hegemonistic, or
asymmetrical, nationalism," which "is both the rarest and the most dangerous
variety of nationalism." The hegemonistic type--of which Kemalism is an
instance--is especially dangerous both because it cannot permit even mild
deviations and because violent suppression begets violent reaction,
especially against a minority with the muscle to fight back. The PKK, whose
vague Marxism and violent acts alienated many Kurds, remained the only
vehicle for Kurdish aspirations and the only protector against
state-sponsored cultural genocide, which was rationalized by an inflexible,
unitary, racialist ideology, and enforced with organized violence.
The second challenge to Kemalism--a vibrant political Islam--has also
appeared often in the years of the republic. The September 12 coup occurred
just six days after Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of an Islamic political
party and the deputy prime minister, gave a rabble-rousing speech condemning
Israel. Erbakan was arrested during the coup, and the incident renewed the
tensions between Islam and the military. Like Ataturk, the generals of the
1970s and 1980s used Islam to their advantage: Marxists and Kurdish leftists
were countered with military support for the so-called imam-hatip
schools--religious instruction for adolescents meant to divert them from
leftist politics. Meanwhile, in the junta and its aftermath, Turkish politics
barely tolerated the likes of Erbakan and his new party, Refah.
But with the civil war draining the treasury, boosting inflation to more than
100 percent, piling on more debt, and strangling foreign investment,
low-skilled workers and farmers--the most religious strata in Turkish
society--were the first to suffer. The economic impacts of war and
"globalization" drove increasing numbers to Refah. Students of the imam-hatip
schools were coming of age politically. And the swarms of Kurdish refugees
were given aid and comfort by Refah and other Islamic organizations. This
combination of factors boosted Refah's fortunes in 1994 municipal elections
(electing mayors in Ankara and Istanbul) and December 1995 national
elections, when the party won a slight plurality, enabling Erbakan to form a
government six months later.
The secularist military would not tolerate Erbakan in power, however, and
within a few months was demanding that he rescind his mild reforms, which
permitted greater religious expression--allowing women to wear head scarves
in court, for example. When he balked, the military forced a "soft coup,"
threatening to oust him; finally, in June 1997, he resigned. Democratic
governance would again not stand in the way of Kemalism. The military has
made it clear that Erbakan will not be permitted to become premier again,
even if Refah is the top vote recipient in the next election.
3.
As Jonathan Randal deftly puts it, "Only a state as slavishly faithful to the
ossified letter of its founding dogma could have backed itself into a corner
as totally as Turkey did in this final decade of the twentieth century."
Randal makes a compelling case: Kemalism, sclerotic and corrupt but clinging
to the rigid mindset of Turkish nationalism, could not allow the pluralism
that makes Western democracies so adaptive. The obdurate military dashed
hopes for economic growth and democracy, and turned perhaps a third of the
electorate toward traditionalist reactionaries like Refah. Randal, whose
reporting skills are legendary (while his book is oddly gossipy and
repetitive), has it exactly right. McDowall's more measured and conventional
history also pinpoints Turkish nationalism as the core problem, whereas
neither Huntington nor Kaplan frame the issue with quite such clarity.
Huntington, to his credit, does offer a remarkable answer to this question:
What follows Kemalism, if (as Huntington supposes) Turkey cannot totally
escape its Islamic past and will never be accepted by Christian Europe?
Turkey could, he replies "be ready to give up its frustrating and humiliating
role as a beggar pleading for membership in the West and to resume its much
more impressive and elevated historical role as the principal Islamic
interlocutor and antagonist of the West." (Erbakan's inability to deliver
such a vision is due to his personal failures as a politician.) Huntington
says Turkey could "become a South Africa . . . changing itself from a pariah
state in its civilization to the leading state of that civilization." But the
possibility of a Turkish Mandela emerging to turn that trick--to reject
"Ataturk's legacy more thoroughly than Russia has rejected Lenin's"--is
difficult to imagine among Turkey's corrupt, obsequious, and aging elite.
Moreover, a visionary, Islamic Turkey is everything America would abhor.
American backing of Ankara, lavish since the time of the 1980 coup, is
predicated on precisely the opposite: that Turkey will remain not only
secular and Western-oriented, but will serve as a bulwark against Islamic and
Arab militancy in the region. Until the anti-foreign aid virus infected
Capitol Hill, Turkey was the third-largest recipient of military assistance.
The dispatch of sophisticated weaponry--F-16 fighter jets, Black Hawk and
Cobra helicopters, tanks, etc.--is justified by Turkey's "bad neighborhood":
Syria, Iraq, and especially Iran.
But the bad 'hood rationale is a canard. As Henri Barkey and his colleagues
point out in Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey's Role in the Middle East, the
relations Ankara pursues with these difficult states are complex and not
without some danger (partially stemming from Kurdish restiveness). But they
neither justify the weapons flow to Turkey nor fulfill the US policy of "dual
containment" of Baghdad and Teheran. One could instead view Turkey as the
meddlesome neighbor: sending arms to Chechen rebels and Azeri belligerents,
occupying northern Cyprus, repeatedly bombing Kurdish areas of northern Iraq,
threatening Syria (which harbors Ocalan), and huffing about Greece, Bosnia,
Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Russia.
In any case, the neighborhood where the Turks use the weapons conveyed from
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Texas is its own southeast, where jets and
helicopters attack PKK camps and empty out Kurdish villages. It is by far the
most significant use of US weapons in the world. America has supplied the
muscle for Turkey's war, and winked at the military's actions--including its
violent supression of free expression--to sustain Turkey as a platform for
the protection of US "strategic interests" in the Persian Gulf and in the
newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, especially the flow of
Caspian Sea oil. This, in essence, is what Nixon, Kissinger, and Carter did
in the Shah's Iran in the 1970s, and, in a different way, what Reagan and
Bush did in Saddam's Iraq in the 1980s: bribe tyrants in exchange for their
fidelity to American interests. Both ended badly, indeed disastrously for
nearly everyone. Now the disaster unfolds in Turkey: tens of thousands dead
and wounded, millions homeless.
The new attention to this debacle is welcome, but the regard of a few
intellectuals and journalists is unlikely to unlock the grip of ideology in
Turkey or overcome American inertia. Of the former, one can say that Kemalism
will ultimately lose its power; the current crisis, which includes official
corruption of the dirtiest kind, indicates how tenuous Ataturk's legacy may
be, how easily it may disassemble with the right combination of charismatic
leadership and the internal will to change. As to the policies of Turkey's
most stalwart ally: Washington's embrace of the status quo is simply
thoughtless and reflexive. America's major news media regard Turkey as some
sort of exotic Muslim sideshow. But the show has been running for a long
time, and features a sustained pattern of massive human rights violations,
among the most egregious in the twentieth century.
Would it be different, one wonders, if we saw Turkey as a fascist bully
engendering its own collapse? If we saw the "white genocide" of the Kurds in
a more compelling historical light, and the peril in Turkey's re-running the
"Iran precedent"? That fascism still lives in Europe is a disturbing idea.
That America is its closest ally is an abhorrent one.
>
John Tirman's Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade
and sadly even today Turkey persists in its racist, terrorist behaviour:
Mayor of Diyarbakir: The Turkish Constitutional amendments haven t
brought us anything to date, but rather the contrary
25/03/2002 KurdishMedia.com (Translated)
Junge Welt s Dieter Balle spoke with Feridun Celik, Mayor of
Diyarbakir and a member of the Pro-Kurdish leftist party HADEP
[People s Democracy Party]:
Q: In October of 2001, the Turkish Parliament passed over 30
Constitutional amendments with regard to the planned accession to the
EU [European Union], which were intended to improve the situation of
human rights and minorities. Have there been any perceptible
consequences to date in the Kurdish regions?
The Constitutional amendments haven t brought us anything to date, but
rather the contrary: Publications and broadcasts in Kurdish are
threatened with more prohibitions than ever. The single improvement
that can be cited is the shortening of the time-period of initial
detention.
Read full text of the interview on:
The U.S. threat of war against Iraq: Where do Turkey s Kurds stand?
http://www.kurdmedia.com/inter.asp?id=50
WolfWolf
KURDISH DESCENT?
The allegations that Kurdish dissident journalists, writers, politicians and
prominent figures are assassinated through State's plot thus the
perpetrators remain unidentified, and like in the case of the bombing of the
office of the pro-PKK newspaper, "Özgür Gündem" (Free Agenda) "state
terrorism" and "dirty war" are waged are frequently brought to the
attention. The fight of Turkey as a state under the rule of law against PKK
terrorism is attempted to be depicted as repression and genocide of Kurds.
In reality, protection of constitutional order against an organization which
adopts armed struggle under Marxist ideology is carried out for each citizen
regardless of his/her ethnic origin in every part of Turkey to enjoy his/her
rights enshrined in the Constitution at least as much as the people living
in Western Turkey. During this legitimate struggle against terrorism
occasional human rights violations could happen in Turkey like in any other
democratic country. For instance, European Court of Human Rights had held
that Britain violated Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights
related to the rights to the liberty and security of person by detaining
without charge or appropriate procedural safeguards, persons suspected of
participating in "terrorist" activities with respect to the operation of the
Prevention of Terrorism Act. In the aftermath of this decision, Britain
invoked Article 15 of the Convention which allows the states to take
measures derogating from their obligations under the Convention in time of
war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation.
Considering the extent and brutality of the PKK terrorism that targets
national and territorial integrity of Turkey, it is likely that unlawful
actions and human rights violations in the fight against terrorism could
also happen in Turkey. Verdicts on such allegations are rendered by
independent courts in Turkey regarding the rule of law. Also, petitions
related to human rights violations can be submitted to the European
Commission of Human Rights, and in the event of the Commission accepting a
petition, a friendly settlement between the petitioner and Turkey can be
effected by the Commission under Article 28 of the Convention.
In spite of the all atrocities by the PKK, nonexistence of the hatred and
discrimination against Kurds in Turkish society points that PKK cannot
attain its objective. Turkish citizens have identified Kurdish identity with
PKK terrorism almost in none of the funerals of officers, soldiers and
policemen assassinated by the PKK where the most emotional scenes occur. In
that atmosphere, the attacks on persons and organizations known for their
separatist standings would serve the aims of the PKK. It is, therefore, not
reasonable to think that Turkish state has planned those attacks. On the
other hand, intolerance of its leader against the opposition in the PKK as
can be seen in the organization's Marxist-Leninist totalitarian structure
results in the killings of the dissidents of the PKK leadership even though
they share the same separatist view. Also, murders caused by blood feuds,
honor or plain personal vendetta are immediately attributed to the State.
Meanwhile, remote small villages on the mountainous terrain of the region
become the ideal targets for terrorist attacks. And to deploy security
forces permanently in those locations is not an easy task. Then, villagers
who do not want to give in under terrorist threats volunteer to guard their
villages. Most of these people called as provisional village guards who
become the subject of criticism for their uncontrolled behavior are of
Kurdish descent. This fact also invalidates the argument that acts of State
are directed to Kurds and it further proves that the backing of Kurdish
people to PKK is weak.
IS THE PKK A POLITICAL PARTY?
Political parties are the organizations with popular support and clarity and
based on collective common sense. Including the parties defending change and
structural transformations, they carry out this through social
reconciliation and methods of reformism. As the inevitable elements of
democracy parties should be the assurances of democracy, freedom, stability
and consequently a humane order.
It is public support which political parties get power from. And public will
appear best in equal and democratic competition circumstances. Organizations
that do not accept peaceful democratic competition conditions are not
political parties. If their principal political means are violence, they are
terrorist organizations or revolutionary groups to the extent of their
purpose and support.
The characteristics of the PKK are best described by the words of its
leader, Abdullah Öcalan: "The tactics of the party is guerrilla. Now it
directs political developments. We can say that nucleus of the guerrilla is
a more condensed form of our party's nature. It is not worth mentioning that
the nucleus of the guerrilla consists of the party's vanguard nuclei for a
long time. This state is mostly the same. The most reliable members of the
political party build up the guerrilla. In this case, it is the organization
of guerrilla nucleus, style of management and methods of working and
fighting that we must put more emphasis on... As it is known, top management
directs a war. In our organization top managers of the war are parties."
Öcalan clearly stated his methods and targets in the following excerpts from
a program broadcast on Channel 4 of Swedish TV on November 4, 1990: "We
attack Turkish targets no matter they are for either economic or social or
touristic purposes. We will carry out all kinds of attacks by explosives and
guns especially in Turkey. Those who go to Turkey are considered to be
helping this country in its fight against us and for this reason we will
take actions on them." The violent methods of the PKK may not always be
conventional. In March 1992 the PKK poisoned water tanks at a Turkish Air
Force compound in Istanbul with lethal concentrations of potassium cyanide
but that was discovered before any casualties had been incurred. A January
1994 report by a Turkish television (but denied by the Turkish foreign
minister) stated that the PKK had mounted a gas attack on a village in
Eastern Turkey, killing 21 people.
"...If we get better organized, do they think that capital will be
comfortable in the metropolises, or tourism be left in peace? This is only a
technical matter; we have not resorted to it this year but next year we will
involve many other organizations and we will bring tourism to a halt. A bomb
to each factory will be more than enough, a couple of rockets to bigger
installations will be more than enough. We have enough potential to set up
thousands of organizations." Accordingly, thousands of people including
soldiers, civilians, the old, children and women have lost their lives since
1984 as the result of the PKK terror.
In the West there are statements and stands confirming terrorist nature of
the PKK. For instance, the USA has expressed that it sees the PKK as a
terrorist organization and it fully supports Turkey's fight against the PKK.
The White House statement released on July 26, 1996 said: "the U.S. supports
Turkey's efforts to deal with the threat posed by the PKK terror." German
federal government officially banned PKK on November 26, 1993. Following the
operations of the French police in November 1993, "Kurdistan Committee" and
"Federation of Cultural Associations of Patriotic Workers of Kurdistan in
France" which were found to be front organizations of the PKK were
dissolved.
With its totalitarian Marxist-Leninist ideology and violence-centered
policy, the PKK has distanced itself from the democratic process and before
the 1994 local elections it threatened the parties to cease their political
activities and not to participate in the elections in Southeastern Turkey.
In addition to this terrorist nature of the PKK, its activities such as
illicit drug trafficking, extortion, and robbery, all of which are normally
considered criminal everywhere in the world, require the PKK to be called as
not only terrorist but also a criminal organization.
WolfWolf
facts which are clear and evident.
No one else covers so conveniently his wrong allegations with superimposed
evasions.
The record of his lies gives us reasons to believe that he receives input
from several other sides.
In fact, whenever he is asked for further substantiation, he does not enter
into matter - either by ignorance (which is no sin) or by fear of exposing
his missing authorship. In a benevolent way, we could say that it is
impossible that so much nonsense grows in one single brain. But does REAL
deserve benevolent treatment?
In any case, it can be left open as to whether - the fact is that REAL's
only aim is to polarize with a clear target: everything that damages
understanding is good for REAL. He does it without remorse or critizism -
neither to himself, nor to his sources. He shows disdain towards a whole
country, a whole nation, without distinction. He shows a nearly seamless
identification with his lies, so that it is legitimate to hold him
responsible not only for his own lies, but also for the evil intentions of
those from whom he receives his input.
It must be emphasized that one source with which he shows an especially
intimate congruence is the bloodthirsty terrorist organization PKK.
Tragically, those whom he pretends to support - the people of Kurdish
origin - are the main victims of his lies. How many of them want to be mixed
with terrorism, lies and contempt?!? How many of them want simply to live
and work peacefully in their environment, instead of becoming
instrumentalized for sinister purposes?!?
This makes his attitude especially reprehensible. He shows no respect, and
he deserves no respect.
REAL is a hopeless case!
WolfWolf
T C
considered immutable by the nation without changing the agreement. In
the case of agreement to be under the authority of the European court
the trials and decisions are a European matter, not just one of the
nations involved in the case. I'll admit that the US has a poor record
in living up to this recently and make no apologies as I consider none
of the excuses valid (particularly our unilateral withdrawal from the
ABM treaty). In fact as a matter of leadership and setting an example
I'm appalled at our refusal to sign on to the world court on
international crimes, the world sorely needs such an institution and NO
nation should be exempt.
Guray Acar
while there are many problems related to the Turkey-EC
integration, how can you justify bringing to the court that a
museum in Turkey should be converted to a church. You cannot
imagine how much this pisses off the Euro-skeptics in Turkey.