Who is remembering the (Ottoman) Muslim dead (Turks, Kurds, Circassians and Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds)?

[rick murphy]

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/who-is-remembering-the-muslim-dead.aspx?pageID=238&nID=45884&NewsCatID=396

Who is remembering the Muslim dead?

April/30/2013

JEREMY SALT

(Jeremy Salt teaches in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent
University in Ankara, Turkey and is the author of Imperialism,
Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878-1896.)


Yes, it is time to remember the civilians massacred in the Ottoman
Empire during the First World, but all of them and not just some.
There might be argument over just how many Armenians died during the
war, over how many were actually massacred compared to those who died
from exposure or disease or over the time span during which they died,
but at least they are an indelible presence in history, compared to
the 2.5 million Muslims or so who died from the same combination of
causes during the same period of history. They are a blank. Not even
Turks seem to have more than a remote idea of the scale of the
catastrophe that overwhelmed their Muslim forebears during the war.
The western mainstream knows absolutely nothing and if there are any
victims of the war we need to “remember,” it is these entirely
vanished Muslims. Close to 3 million Ottoman civilians are estimated
to have died during the war. Hundreds of thousands were Armenians or
other Christians, but the vast bulk were Muslims - Turks, Kurds,
Circassians and Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds.

The key date for the Armenians is April 24, 1915, when the Ottoman
government finally decided to close down the Armenian political
committees. The key date from the Ottoman point of view was a week
earlier, when thousands of Armenians launched an armed uprising in the
city of Van, bringing the problem of Armenian insurgency to a head.
Apart from Russian Armenians enlisted in the regular army, the Russian
military command had formed four Armenian “volunteer” battalions
tasked with the job of “liberating” Eastern Anatolian provinces in
which more than 80 percent of the population was Muslim. Thousands of
Ottoman Armenians had also gone over to the other side, forming armed
groups that were sabotaging the war effort from behind the lines
through attacks on Muslim villages and the sabotage of lines of
communication.

With the Third Army effectively disabled in the disaster at Sarikamiş
and all young men of fighting age at the front, the Ottoman military
did not have the numbers to provide security for the civilian
population or quell the Armenian insurgency. The Van uprising brought
months of deliberation and uncertainty over what to do to a head. From
the military perspective it does not matter whether the uprising was
defensive in nature - as Armenians claim - or whether it was a well-
prepared uprising, as the stockpiling of ammunition, the digging of
trenches, the breaking down of walls in the Armenian quarter and even
the sewing of uniforms would seem to indicate. All that mattered to
the Ottoman military was that an important provincial city close to
the Russian border was under attack.

By the middle of May, the Ottoman governor had been driven out and the
city handed over to Russian control. Much of Van had been destroyed.
The Armenians laid waste not just to the Muslim quarter of the town
but also to the villages around the nearby lake, slaughtering many
thousands of people. Others were killed as they tried to flee. The
uprising was the last straw for the military command. Toward the end
of May it recommended that all Armenians be moved away from the war
zone. Thus began the techir (relocation).

The attacks on Muslim civilians reached their apogee during the
Russian occupation of northeastern Anatolia. With the collapse of the
Russian war effort after the Bolshevik revolution, for a brief period
the Armenians had the field to themselves before they also were driven
back. Returning Ottoman forces encountered scenes of absolute horror
in towns, villages and cities across the east. No cruelty practiced in
medieval times could exceed the sadistic barbarity of the Armenian
çetiler (gangs). Their deeds were recounted by survivors in documents
written at the time by Ottoman military commanders and provincial
authorities.

The figures collated from these documents indicate that from beginning
to end, more than 500,000 Muslims were massacred by Russian and/or
Armenian forces, apart from the large number who died of other causes.
One does not have to believe this round figure any more than one has
to believe the figures of Armenian dead put out by the Armenian
information network, but even if the number of Muslims massacred was
“only” 400,000 or 300,000, there is a basic truth that has so far been
skated over, ignored or played down, but ultimately cannot be credibly
denied: the Armenians were perpetrators as well as the victims of
terrible large-scale atrocities.

It is extraordinary that none of this seems to be known or thought
worthy of mention by Turks who have adopted the Armenian cause. They
are right to issue statements of regret or remorse for the crimes
committed by their forebears, but they should surely also be insisting
that Armenians come to terms with the crimes committed by their
forebears. The road to true reconciliation lies in the mutual
acknowledgement of crimes committed long ago and not in distorting
history by allocating the role of perpetrator to one side and victim
of the other.

*Jeremy Salt is an associate professor in the Department of Political
Science and Public Administration at Ankara’s Bilkent University.

April/30/2013