{"id":19528,"date":"2017-03-23T17:27:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T17:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/?p=19528"},"modified":"2017-03-23T17:27:19","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T17:27:19","slug":"it-is-president-erdogans-turkey-not-humane-germany-that-is-guilty-of-nazi-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/?p=19528","title":{"rendered":"It is President Erdogan’s Turkey, not humane Germany, that is guilty of ‘Nazi practices’"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was something especially obscene about Turkish president Erdogan\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s comparison<\/a> of Angela Merkel\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s Germany with the Nazis. \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093Nazi practices\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d were going on in Germany, he said, after Berlin banned<\/a> Turkish political demonstrations \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0something which Erdogan does regularly. It\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s not just that Germany daily repents its destruction of Europe\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s Jews in the Second World War. Nor that Merkel\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s extraordinary and humane \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c and, for her, politically damaging \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009d decision to allow the Middle East\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s refugees to enter her country was the greatest act of contrition for Hitler\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s crimes. It\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s that Erdogan\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s own nation stayed heroically neutral in World War Two.<\/p>\n

Even though the Brits helped to train Turkish pilots in 1940, Ismet Inonu, Erdogan\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s more diplomatic predecessor at the time, actually sent Turkish officers to occupied Europe as guests of the Nazi Reich to tour the Eastern Front and the Atlantic Wall opposite Britain \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0a happy trip during which, so the Turkish visitors later reported, they were treated with much respect and given unexpected access to Wehrmacht military planners. Thank heavens Turkey still has historians to expose such little nuggets of history,\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0if they are not locked up today in Erdogan\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s prisons.<\/p>\n

The Nazis, whom Erdogan pretends to hate so much, rather liked Turkey. Not only did Turkey stay neutral in the war, but the Nazi newspaper\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0Volkischer Beobachter<\/em>\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0and other Reich dailies had, since the early 1930s, devotedly praised the “Turkified”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0state which had emerged from the ruins of the First World War. This was a thinly-layered reference to Ottoman Turkey\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s “racial purity”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0after the genocide of one and a half million of its minority Christians in 1915 \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c a holocaust which deeply influenced Hitler in his own decision to destroy the Jews of Europe.<\/p>\n

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Turkey’s Erdogan<\/span> steps up anti-Europe rhetoric<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In several newspaper interviews before the war, Hitler referred to Europe\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s own forgetfulness of the Armenian massacres. He even asked who \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093now remembers\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d them, in a meeting with his generals before invading Poland in 1939 \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c an open invitation to kill Jews, who then constituted 30 per cent of the population of Warsaw alone.<\/p>\n

Several of Hitler\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s diplomats and Wehrmacht officers had earlier been advisers to the Ottoman Turks and actually witnessed the Armenian killings in 1915. They later turned up in the occupied Soviet Union as German officers after June of 1941, where the Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews by the tens of thousands.<\/p>\n

And while Merkel\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s Germany has constantly expressed its remorse for the Jewish Holocaust, Erdogan will not even admit to Turkey\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s Holocaust of its Armenian\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0citizens<\/a> in 1915. Modern\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0day Turks who have mentioned this terrible precedent in genocide have been threatened with imprisonment by the Turkish state. Even today, the great Armenian cathedral of Gaziantep is used as a mosque \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c I saw part of its “Islamic”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0restoration a few weeks ago \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c yet Merkel\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s Germany has restored the Jewish synagogues which the Nazis destroyed on Kristallnacht in November 1938.<\/p>\n

Quite coincidentally, a remarkable book is to be published in the United States this summer with the hitherto unheard story of a young Armenian who served in the Turkish army while its soldiers were slaughtering his own people \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c indeed, his own family. Forced into Genocide<\/em>\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0is Yervant Alexanian\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s own frightful account of his people\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s suffering, with unimpeachable documentation \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c in vast enough amounts to prevent the usual Turkish \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056d\u009cgenocide deniers\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7 (twins of the European \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056d\u009cdeniers\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7 of the Jewish Holocaust) of denouncing the book as a forgery.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0It has a generous foreward by Israel Charny, Israel\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s own principal genocide scholar, and is edited by Adrianne Alexanian, the daughter of Yervant, who died in 1983.<\/p>\n

It is a story which Erdogan should be reading \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c and publicising \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c right now, for it involves more \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093Nazi practices\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d than the new Sultan of Istanbul would ever want to acknowledge. Yervant, who would survive to emigrate to the US and later campaign in a series of letters to American congressmen at Turkey\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s refusal to acknowledge the assassination of his people.<\/p>\n

His own story, told in his own words, is both heroic and deeply moving. Armenians were weeded out of the Turkish army and themselves butchered in 1915, but a few survived in the ranks, with the help of friends and occasionally by honourable Turkish officers. Even Yervant eventually had to convert to Islam to survive. The book contains all his military documentation, but what ultimately enabled him to survive was his ability to play the bugle. He was the only man in his Turkish army unit who could play the instrument. There is even a photograph of Yervant\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0in full Turkish Ottoman uniform holding his precious bugle. But it is his account of the Armenian Holocaust which should shame Sultan Erdogan.<\/p>\n

His family agreed that if he could survive by avoiding the death march on which the Turks were to send them, he should stay behind alone in the Turkish city of Sipas. Here is his description of the last day:<\/p>\n

\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093The worst day of my life was 3 July\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a01915 when I watched 51 members of my family disappear over the hill. I remember it as if it was yesterday \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c after spending the night on the banks of the Halys River, the grisly caravan that included my family was woken and driven up the Kartashlar Yokush Hill. They were scaling the Armenian Golgotha. I stood there and watched my mother and entire extended family climb over that hill never to be seen again. In total, I lost 51 members of my family that day.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d<\/p>\n

Most of the Armenian men of Yervant\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s city of Sipas were executed by rifle or, Isis-style, with knives. The women and children were driven into the deserts to be raped and murdered.<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/voices\/turkey-erdogan-crisis-germany-angela-merkel-row-europe-nazi-practices-robert-fisk-a7643431.html<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was something especially obscene about Turkish president Erdogan\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s comparison of Angela Merkel\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s Germany with the Nazis. \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093Nazi practices\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d were going on in Germany, he said, after Berlin banned Turkish political demonstrations \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009c\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0something which Erdogan […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}