The Battle of Vienna, 11-12 Sept 1683,
when the Turks threatened European civilization.
One gets the feeling that the modern left would have supported the Turks.
Image from
LOC.
See
more.
Far from being propaganda, this image far understates the actual horror.
One account
of the 1876 massacre said:
"We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and we observed that they were all small and that the articles of clothing intermingled with them and lying about were all women's apparel. These, then, were all women and girls.
... The skulls were nearly all separated from the rest of the bones - the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded.
...
It is to be remarked that all the skeletons found here were dressed in a chemise only, and this poor child had evidently been stripped to her chemise, partly in the search for money and jewels, partly out of mere brutality, and afterwards killed. We have tallied with many women who had passed through all parts of the ordeal but the last, and the procedure seems to have been, as follows: They would seize a woman, strip her carefully to her chemise, laying aside articles of clothing that were valuable, with any ornaments and jewels she might have about her. Then as many of them as cared would violate her, and the last man would kill her or not as the humour took him.
At the next house a man stopped us to show where a blind little brother had been burned alive
...
On the other side of the way were the skeletons of two children lying side by side .. with frightful, sabre cuts in their little skulls. The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets .. on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be."
Even before the 20th century genocide of non-Muslims,
the world was well aware
that the Ottoman Turks slaughtered Christians
and followed
Islamic extremism.
Clear-sighted
1903 cartoon in New York.
See full size.
This was posted at a left-wing
University of Chicago site
that complains about the
"negative stereotyping"
of the cartoon.
The same left-wing site
complains about a Cox and Forkum cartoon.
The "Young Turks" were supposedly "secular",
and yet, of course, their ideas led to
genocide against non-Muslims in Turkey.
It is perverted that the phrase
"Young Turks" has become an innocuous term for any up-and-coming members
of any group.
It should be a term that has the same meaning to us
as "Nazi Youth".
A Modern Jihad Genocide
by Andrew G. Bostom
- The Young Turks as genocidal Islamo-fascists.
The genocide of Christians
as a natural outcome of dhimmitude.
The Orthodox Christian
Holocaust
of the 20th century
(at the hands of the Turks, the Soviets, the Nazis and the Croats).
"it
is reasonable to conclude that
up to 50 million Orthodox Christians
have perished [in democide]
in the first eight decades of the twentieth century.
...
Unfortunately, the depth and range of the Orthodox suffering throughout the world in this century,
remains largely unknown and
unappreciated in the West."
This is of course a controversial topic in Turkey,
where democide denial
is almost universal.
Discussion of this topic is taken as attacking their very national identity
and their national heroes.
Note that
this is quite normal for democides.
Of the
5 worst democides of the 20th centuryonly the German democide is freely and openly acknowledged
in its home country.
Japan is still in denial about their democide,
China is very much in denial about Mao's democide,
and Russia is still largely in denial about the Soviet democide.
Only the Germans have fully come
to terms with their past.
The burning of Smyrna
and the massacre of 100,000 Christians
(1922)
by the Turkish army under the butcher Ataturk.
The Armenian Genocide (PBS).
Turkey's genocide of the Christians.
The world was well aware of the
genocide of Christians by the Turks.
From here.
This is like creationists suing the biology department.
Happily, they lost.
See
judgement, May 2012, which states:
"the "denial" statement reasonably can be construed as stating simply that the TCA website denies that the treatment of Armenians within Turkey during World War I meets the definition of the term "genocide." ... Because the TCA website
does, in fact, state
that it is "highly unlikely that a genocide charge could be sustained against the Ottoman government or its successor" ... the Center's statement under this interpretation is true and, thus, .. not actionable."
Cenk Uygur of "The Young Turks" - Armenian Genocide denier
Turkish-American
Cenk Uygur
is an interesting character.
A brave ex-Muslim atheist
(hurray)
who is however annoyingly left-wing and
anti-counterjihad
(boo).
I always thought he
picked the disgustingly offensive name
"The Young Turks"
for his political talk show
in 2005
out of ignorance.
But of course, thinking about it, that makes no sense.
How could a highly-political person of Turkish background
not know all about the Young Turks and the genocide they carried out?
And then I discovered that he denied the Armenian genocide.
His choice of name
now seems to be something more sinister.
Historical Fact or Falsehood?, Cenk Uygur, The Daily Pennsylvanian, November 20, 1991.
As a politically active young student,
Cenk Uygur denied the Armenian genocide.
Letter from
Cenk Uygur to Salon, 16 June 1999,
again denied the Armenian genocide.
Turkey has improved somewhat in the last few decades,
partly because of the carrot of possible EU membership.
It has reformed its notorious
anti-Kurdish laws.
This puts it ahead of most of the Islamic world,
most of which is "Not Free",
but still puts it out in the cold compared to the EU.
Every single country in the EU
is "Free".
There are no "Partly Free" countries in the EU.
Persecution of Christians
in modern Turkey.
The Catholic Church is not legally recognized in Turkey.
Christians in Turkey face severe restrictions on property ownership,
and cannot build places of worship or run seminaries to train their clerics.
Robert Spencer:
"The institutionalized subjugation and second-class status of religious minorities under the Ottoman Empire was bad enough, but Turkish secularism has been, if anything, even worse. Constantinople was 50 percent Christian as recently as 1914 (its name was changed to Istanbul in 1930); today, it is less than 1 percent Christian."
Christian Woman in Turkey Buried As Muslim, June 2011.
She converted to Christianity
but did not change her identification card
"because of the hurdles attached to the process of doing so."
Her son said:
"The bureaucracy that you have to go through for that kind of a change is terrible.
Plus officials question why you did it.
..
They ask you why you changed your religion. They even try to convince you that Islam is the best religion.
Actually, their questions and remarks reach the level of harassment."
The Islamic state of Turkey is engaged in an ongoing campaign
to shut down and destroy one of the oldest Christian monasteries
in the world,
the 4th century AD
Mor Gabriel Monastery.
Freedom of expression in Turkey
by Atilla Yayla, December 6, 2006.
Unbelievably, his university suspended him for criticising the butcher
Kemal Ataturk.
He has been accused
of failing
"to educate Turkish students in accordance with Ataturk's principles and revolutions,"
the legal basis of education in Turkey.
Law 5816 prohibits publicly "insulting Ataturk's memory."
Article 301 stipulates prison for
"public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey
[or]
the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State,
the military or security structures."
Atilla Yayla was driven into exile.
Orhan Pamuk
went on trial for "insulting Turkishness" for talking about the Armenian genocide.
The case was eventually dropped.
Nedim Gürsel
was charged in Turkey with
insulting Islam
("denigration of the religious values of a segment of the population")
for his novel
The Daughters of Allah
(2008).
He was acquitted.
Atheist and famous pianist
Fazil Say
was prosecuted in 2012 under sharia law in "secular" Turkey.
He was prosecuted for tweeting ancient quotes from Omar Khayyam
about
wine and women in paradise:
“You say its rivers will flow in wine. Is the Garden of Eden a drinking house? You say you will give two hours to each Muslim. Is the Garden of Eden a whorehouse?”
Even in 2011, a simple statement of disbelief in Islam is still illegal in Turkey.
Cartoonist Bahadir Baruter
included in this cartoon the statement:
"There is no Allah, religion is a lie."
In Sept 2011, Turkey charged him with
"insulting the religious values adopted by a part of the population".
Some "secular" state this is!
Turkey
fined a local TV station for "blasphemy" in Dec 2012
for transmitting
the
"Treehouse of Horror XXII"
episode of The Simpsons (Oct 2011).
In the story
"Dial D for Diddly",
Homer says God does not exist, and starts burning Ned's bible, only to be stopped and killed by God himself.
However, God reveals that Satan really runs the world.
God has to follow his orders.
Also, Satan is sleeping with Ned's deceased wife.
Above, Satan orders God to get him a coffee.
Such comedy is illegal in "secular" Turkey.
The Islamic gang went to a service pretending to be interested in Christianity.
Instead they tied up the Christians and tortured them for hours.
They probably felt they had a right to do this because under Islamic sharia
attempting to convert a Muslim
is punishable by death.
One killer was the son of the local mayor.
Description of the torture:
"They were disemboweled, and their intestines sliced up in front of their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were destroyed. Fingers were chopped off, their noses and mouths and anuses were sliced open.
...
Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, heads practically decapitated."
Gibbons claims that non-Muslims have lived in peace in Turkey for centuries.
Doesn't this rather ignore the
20th century holocaust of non-Muslims?
Robert Spencer
notes that
"the non-Muslim population of Istanbul itself has gone from 50% in 1914 to less than one percent today. How could this have happened in a land of such harmonious diversity?"
Gibbons describes the jihadist bombers of Jews as
"angry and desperate men".
Desperate?
How does he know they are "desperate"?
This makes it sound as if they have some kind of grievance.
It is more accurate to say they are racist, supremacist men,
who are not being oppressed at all,
but rather are angry that they are not able to oppress others.
Gibbons basically suggests that Turkish Jews keep their heads down and act like dhimmis
and don't support Israel
if they don't want trouble:
"Of all the trials that have befallen [Turkish Jews] over the last 500 years, none has brought more threat than the existence of Israel. It has drained away more than half of their numbers and brought Palestinian gunmen to the door of the Neve Shalom synagogue
17 years ago, at the cost of 22 lives."
That is, Israel, not Islamism, is to blame for both Islamist violence against Jews in Turkey,
and for the decline in Jewish numbers in Turkey.
Norman Geras
fisks the weasel words in the article.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Prime Minister of Turkey
since 2003,
started out an Islamist,
became more pragmatic for a long time,
but in recent years has turned more to his populist anti-western Islamist roots.
Erdogan
shows why Turkey should not be allowed into the EU:
He denies the Armenian genocide
(1,900,000 killed)
because Muslims did it, and non-Muslims were killed.
"this country's history is as clean and clear as the sun.
... There is no genocide in our civilization."
He says
Darfur (300,000 killed)
is not genocide,
because Muslims did it, even though Muslims were killed.
"Muslims don't commit genocide" he absurdly says.
However, the (probably justified) killing of maybe 50 Muslim rioters by non-Muslims
would obviously be genocide.
"The killings of Uighur Turks by the Chinese police during
demonstrations
constitute genocide.
I use this term intentionally."
Now
I have no time for the Chinese government,
and I would not deny that Muslims in China are oppressed
(as are all believers),
but the July 2009 riots
actually represent the killing by police of rioting Muslims
who were attacking and killing utterly innocent civilians.
And this is what Erdogan calls genocide!
Turkey threatens to expel 100,000 Armenians
if people keep talking about the Armenian genocide.
Oh that'll really convince us that there was no Armenian genocide!
Robert Spencer notes this is
"a move reminiscent of those who say in effect, 'Say that Islam is a religion of peace or we'll kill you'".
Turkey's absurd reaction
to the killing by Israel of 9 violent Turkish Islamists who were attacking
Israeli troops.
Turkish Foreign Minister
says the death of the violent Islamists is like 9/11.
"Psychologically this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey".
Turkey is calling for a jihad against Israel, Joshua Teitelbaum, 8 June 2010.
"Spurned by the EU, where it has applied for membership and ruled by an Islamist party
with delusions of grandeur, Turkey is determined to lead the Muslim world once more ... Turkey is no longer a friend, but not yet an enemy of the US."
Erdogan and the Decline of the Turks by Robert L. Pollock, 3 June 2010.
"To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness."
The Foreign Minister of Turkey
Ahmet Davutoglu
calls on Syria to attack Israel, Feb 2013.
"Why didn't al-Assad even throw a pebble when Israeli jets were flying over his palace and playing with the dignity of his country?"
Early Islamist speeches made by Erdogan
against America, Israel and the West
before he got into power.
Video clips:
"mostly it's just a cinematic dud, a ridiculous Turkish propaganda film
that has little to interest anyone who isn't a nationalistic Turkish teenager
with too much testosterone."
Since 1995.
