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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 3 (February 2001)
By: Anssi Kullberg, 28th Jan. 2001
Numbers of articles and declarations, especially in France, slam Turkey at times when the French Parliament has just decided to "recognise the Armenian genocide" (as if historical truths would be subject to voting). The declaration of the French Parliament caused another diplomatic schism between Turkey and the Europeans who feel necessity of commemorating the Armenian victims of the tragedies that took place in the collapsing late Ottoman Empire. True, lots of Armenians were massacred in mysterious circumstances during the civil wars in the late Ottoman Empire, but so were lots of Turks, lots of Kurds, and especially lots of Caucasian Muslims who were massacred by imperial Russia and her satellites that included Armenian and other terrorist groupings acting against Turkey.
"Who remember the Armenians", goes the dubious sentence put to Hitler’s mouth much later, when the Soviet secret service started to create the official mythology built upon the Armenian genocide. The goal was obvious: to destabilise Russia’s enemies, and to divide and conquer the Armenians and Turks by antagonising the Armenians with all their neighbours – Turks as well as Azeris, Caucasian Muslims and even Caucasian Christians such as Georgians – in order to make the ancient proud nation of Armenians become a petty vassal of the great Stalinist empire.
Still before the 1930s when many mysterious changes took place in the stand and historical mythology of Armenians (following the take-over of the Soviet secret service of the main Armenian parties), there was a heroic Armenian called Anushavan Zatikyan. He escaped from a Soviet prison camp in East Karelia, organising the escape of himself and five others, some of whom were Muslims. The group crossed the border to Finland, from where Zatikyan then, in co-operation with the Finnish military intelligence, organised supply of weapons for a united Armenian-Azeri resistance front against the Bolsheviks. Besides Finns, they were also helped by Finland-based Russian Anatoly Toll and Ukrainian Groshko. Zatikyan co-operated with influential Armenians in Paris. What has happened to the spirit of the influential Armenian lobby in France during the time when the Diaspora became infiltrated by the KGB? Where are today’s Anushavan Zatikyans?
Quite unlike in the dubious sentence that Hitler is claimed to have said, quite many people indeed do remember the Armenians, including the tragedies they had to face in the beginning of the 20th century. But who remembers the Circassians? A large and glorious Caucasian nation was practically wiped out from the earth’s surface in the 1864 genocide – 90 per cent of all Circassians were either killed or driven as refugees into Turkey. Turkey was the only country nearby, which was friendly enough to receive the victims of the czarist terror. Who remembers the victims of the massive genocide that took place in the Balkans? It was committed by the very same Serbians and supported by the very same Russia who continue their genocide in the Balkans and in the Caucasus still today.
Turkey has had lots of problems with the Kurdish areas of Southeast Turkey, and with the Turkish extreme organisations – mainly communists (including the Maoist terrorist organisation PKK, which claims a Kurdish cause, but seems to have mainly Turkish-speaking cadres) and extreme right (the Islamists). Turkey still is the only reliable vanguard of Western and European civilization against the both evils, communism and Islamism, that spread terrorism and are supported and armed by Russia and her Islamic allies in the south. Yet when Turkey protects its civil order and liberties, and at the same time also our liberties in Europe, the Europeans show their gratitude by blaming Turkey for "oppression of the human rights" of the arrested communists and Islamists.
People get beaten also in French prisons and yet France is not being kicked out of Europe because of the oppression of Corsicans and Bretons, or because of the massacres of Algerians not so long ago. What about the Cathars who were once massacred up to last man, woman and child for their Christianity being different from that of the French religious totalitarians? Should the European parliaments also put France into trial for Napoleon’s crimes, and for the bloody massacres of Huguenots (French Calvinists)? France has still not publicly apologised the terrible crimes she has committed against my distant ancestors. Still I do not lay revenge of this upon the present Frenchmen, and I do consider France as an essential part of our common Europe. And so do I consider Turkey, too. (And by the way, also Armenia.)
The very same French people who advocate for isolation of Turkey, have been loudly speaking in favour of Serbia and Russia – the only two countries in the post-Cold-War Europe who have repeatedly committed both genocide and armed invasions against their neighbours. Just in case you would have forgotten: Since 1992 Russia has attacked Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Tajikistan (all these four are countries Russia herself had recognised as independent), Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan. Meanwhile, Serbs have attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosova. Russia supports actively four quasi-states – Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Karabagh – in the territories of Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. All these quasi-states were established by armed invasion and mere terror regime.
Transnistria uses the Soviet flag and the Soviet anthem, and purges its Stalinist terror against the Romanian majority of Moldova. In Abkhazia, only 15 per cent of the population were Abkhazes, and the so-called civil war against Georgia meant actually Russian invasion, and establishment of a Russian-backed terror regime under the KGB officer Vladislav Ardzinba who does not even speak Abkhazian. In Ossetia, the Russian troops helped the Ossetian ultra-nationalists to drive away from their homes the peaceful Georgian (in south) and Ingush (in Prigorodnie rayon) inhabitants. In Karabagh the Armenians occupied from Azerbaijan not only the Armenian-inhabited area but 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territory. Armenia was backed in this endeavour by Russia and Iran. Azerbaijan, like Turkey, is a secular country. The Chechens and Ingush are also moderate Sufi Muslims. The Islamist country, Iran, is Russia’s ally against them.
Although Turkey is a very cautious country which has traditionally avoided all possible confrontations with Russia – illogical, considering the massive scale in which Russia has sought to destabilise and destroy Turkey – and so she has also adopted a very moderate line in regard to her relative nations in the Caucasus and Central Asia. For the shame of the Turks it must be mentioned that they have recently prevented Chechen refugees from entering the country from Georgia, a Christian country which still seems to be the only true friend of Chechnya (perhaps besides Baltic states and Poland). Turkey could also be criticised for wasting her time in the eternal arguments with the unconstructive smaller neighbours both beyond Maritsa and beyond Ararat, when the true threat against Turkey has come from Russia, Iran, and the Arab states.
However, Turkey was one of the European countries that received most Albanian refugees from Kosova, even though Turkey is not the richest one. Turkey, however, has a long tradition of sheltering the victims of all those massacres that the European leftist intellectuals and French parliamentarians always seem to forget. Turkey has the largest diasporas of both Chechens and Circassians outside the former Soviet Union area. There are also lots of people with Balkanian background – Slavs, Albanians, Greeks. Turkey also protects the presently de facto independent Kurdistan in Northern Iraq.
France has been among the first countries, along with Russia and Syria of course, to break the UN sanctions against Iraq. As soon as the West, including Turkey, will no longer protect the Kurds, Iraq will continue the once halted genocide of Kurdish nation, which has been even proceeded by chemical and biological weapons. That means Turkey will continue to shelter also Kurdish refugees. Why is the voice of a predominantly non-Kurdish communist terrorist organisation PKK, with its various branches, more esteemed in Europe than the voice of the millions of Kurds who have been fighting for their existence along with Turks?
The Council of Europe decided to return full voting rights to Russia on Thursday 25th January. At the same time for instance Turkey and Latvia have again been criticised for "violating human rights" in these two democratic countries. In the case of Russia it did not matter for Europe that Russia is actually a fascist state, continuing a full-scale war and genocide of Chechen people, violence spreading to Ingushetia and Dagestan. It did not matter that persecution of various minorities, most of all Caucasians but also other Muslims, Jews, and Russian dissidents prevails all over the huge country. It did not matter that Russia has just abolished religious freedom, considering also many Western missionaries and aid organisations as "illegal".
It did not matter that between Monday and Thursday alone, the Russian leadership had several journalists arrested or beaten, the abolishing of press freedom continues, and two high officials of Vladimir Gusinsky’s Media-Most have been arrested on dubious charges made by Gazprom, the energy giant that the Kremlin uses, now along with Itera, to terrorise its former colonies. At the same time when Putin demands Gusinsky to be arrested in Spain, he has fervently protested against the arrest of Pavel Borodin in the US. Borodin is accused of huge money-laundering and organised crime.
It also did not matter for the Council of Europe that Putin has subjected all war leadership under the FSB (former KGB), which practically governs the whole country by now. For this kind of "strong leadership" Europe has encouraged Russia very consistently. This is supposed to be "democratisation", which needs to be supported. What lesson is Turkey supposed to learn from this in order to be accepted in Europe? Should it solve the "Kurdish problem" like another favourite of France, Iraq, solved the problem with its political prisoners – Saddam’s son wiping them all into massgraves, which finally silenced Amnesty International’s protests.
Meanwhile, Serbia is claimed to be a democratic country, too, so Russia is not alone in proper democracy in this world ruled by such terrible violators of human rights as Latvia and Turkey, and such superpowers ridiculing electoral bureaucracy as the United States. Luckily democracy, especially elections, are known to work fine in countries like Serbia where third-part of the country just drops out of the election, or Russia, where there is no need to count votes from whole republics, since twice the amount of population has already voted there before the opening of the first voting post. Serbia is now led by an ultra-nationalist (Kostunica is more hardline a nationalist than late Tudjman of Croatia) while Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic and other pals are still running at large.
Instead of pacifying Kosova in the only possible way (recognising its independence like was done in Marxist-dominated East Timor very recently), they are preparing for the next war that will follow when Kosova is tried to be incorporated back into Serbian tyranny. The Schicksalssymphonie in the background is plaid by left-wing journalists complaining of uranium bombs and spreading lies about the Racak massacre. Nobody asks why it was so important for Russia, Serbia, Iraq and China to set timing for the uranium scandal to the U.S. presidential shift. Nobody listens to the Finnish pathologists who are upset of the way how pro-Serbian propagandists are purposefully misinterpreting their results, proving massacre but not the circumstances in which the Albanians killed in Racak were shot. And nobody cares about all those thousands of Albanians who have been dug out of massgraves in Kosova after the Serbian troops left. Where they killed by other Albanians? In that case what were the Serbian troops doing there in the first place?
Turkey is repeatedly being mobbed for keeping activists of armed terrorist organisations in her prisons. When the prisons were remodelled – paradoxically enough, to meet the EU regulations set for Turkey – the imprisoned comrades and their fervent messengers in the West protested that making revolution from inside the prison becomes harder if prisoners are being split into rooms with more privacy. However, the same people in the West who care a lot of the professional revolutionaries of Turkey, stay entirely quiet about all the missing students of Prishtina University, including two friends of mine, who disappeared when the first target of the Serbian "anti-terrorist operation" in Kosova was of course the Prishtina University. Has Kostunica released any of the imprisoned Albanian people who were taken to Serbia? Where are the Western protests for those people, most of whom are imprisoned only for their being Albanian?
Now we of course come to the delicate religious question: Are the most enthusiastic anti-Turkish and pro-Russian agitators in Europe generally thinking that Europe should be "purified" from non-Christians like Albanians and Chechens, and that the "noble" goal actually sanctifies the nasty means used for the goal, and that this nasty part of the task is being given to Russia and Serbia? This is namely exactly what one can read from the daily rhetorics of Russian and Serbian politicians and newspapers. When have we last time read similar ideas presented by Turkey – or Albanians or Chechens – about Islamic mission?
The traditional leftist disinformation factory in the Kremlin’s service has nowadays been ever more regularly accompanied by the right-wing fanatics, whose leading idea is simply being against Islam, in any form. For selling their ideas, their exponents like Yossef Bodansky (popular in US, former Pentagon official) or Aleksandr Dugin (popular in France where this right-wing extremist Russian Eurasianist is called Alexandre Douguine) are creating truly fabulous images of an Islamic conspiracy stretching from Bosniaks and Albanians all the way through Chechens,
and Uzbek and Tajik oppositions to Uighurs and Kashmiris. They are repeatedly connected with Turkey (which is a secular country with relatively very low activity especially in the former Soviet dominions) and Pakistan (which used to be supporting the Taliban in Nawaz Sharif’s "democratic" era, but has grown considerably more pro-Western since the military take-over by Pervez Musharraf; also human rights have been considerably improved in Pakistan ever since), while nothing is spoken about Russia’s traditional Islamic allies Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Taliban and especially the mythical terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is being spotted around the world and claimed to possess a nuke, are very nice tools to frighten people. However, how many of us have learned that the American oil company UNOCAL and the Russian oil company Gazprom made a deal in 1996 with the consequent victory of the Taliban? Both the oil companies have strong relations with state-power in their home countries, and both support the Taliban. How often do we read that actually there is a very nice concentration of former pro-Soviet Afghan leaders in the present leadership of the Taliban regime? Why most of the Taliban’s weapons come from Russia?
Why do the fervent anti-Islamists of Europe attack secular Muslims of Turkey and the Caucasus, let alone in the Balkans, where it is impossible to see who is a Muslim and who is a Christian except if you observe them going to church or mosque? There would be much better targets for their anger in the Islamic countries which are truly authoritarian, and most often supported by Russia. Although there is no "Islamic expansion toward Europe", and no Islamic country has attacked a single Christian country for a long time (while I could count dozens of aggressions of Christian countries against Muslims from the last ten years alone), there are indeed Islamic countries where human rights are being gravely violated. Turkey is not one of them.
There might be more mess in Turkey than there is in Finland or in Austria, but France and Greece are not so far away from Turkey’s situation, if we look at objective facts. People disappear and die mysteriously in Greek prisons, newspapers of Turkish minority are being prohibited and so on. The strong and open position of French Front National led by a former communist and torture officer Jean-Marie Le Pen should make any European feel anxious and hear the whispers of Vichy. France, like Turkey, has the official policy of not recognising any other nations but French in the French territory. Is France thus denying the existence and rights of Bretons, Corsicans, Basques, Provençals and all the immigrant nationalities? I would very much like to see Turkey as a federation with large regional autonomy and thus better guarantee for minority languages and cultures, but can we really demand this before countries like France and Spain have made some progress on the same field?
Spaniards especially, with their ETA problem, should understand that Turkey is not fighting a war against the Kurdish nation, but against a terrorist organisation that is not supported by the majority of Kurds. Still, autonomy for West Kurdistan and Basque Country could help in undermining the cause terrorist groups like ETA and PKK are claiming. Russia in Chechnya and Serbia in Kosova have not been fighting against terrorism – they have fought, and used state-terror, against secession cause of two nations that stand united behind their causes against two tyrannies. The replies of Serbia and Russia against their neighbours and minorities have been more cruel in our modern world than Turkey was against its minorities a hundred years ago. Yet Turkey is still been blamed for that, while Russia and Serbia are being praised for "democratisation".
As a final point I want to say something about Cyprus. When Turkey invaded Northern Cyprus in order to intervene against the pogroms started by Greek Cypriots against their Turkish neighbours, this was done with not even slight part of the cruelty France used in Algeria not so long time ago. Cyprus might have been violently occupied by Ottoman Turkey hundreds of years ago, but that was no reason for the Greeks to start ethnic cleansing against the present Turkish inhabitants of the island. At all events, now Cyprus is divided and both sides have "cleansed" their territory. This is a fact, and it should be recognised that there are two state on Cyprus. Both these states are behaving peacefully nowadays, and they are relatively prosperous. There is no reason to block them from the EU, since a settlement over Cyprus would greatly benefit both Turkey and Greece.
I need not mention, whose benefit it serves to cause conflict between two NATO countries in these critical times.
Disclaimer: I have absolutely nothing against Greece or Armenia, and I am not claiming that the Turkish government would be entirely innocent. However, I call for some sense of proportionality in exaggerated accusations against some countries and simultaneous toleration, even encouragement, of others’ horrible acts. Apparently the French authors of all the recent anti-Turkish texts have, for a moment, lost this sense of proportions in judging history and presence through religiously or ideologically biased lenses.
AKK