Monday, November 26, 2007

PONTUS RUM LAZISTAN ULKESI

Batı Asya'da bir ülke.Bugünkü Ermenistan Cumhuriyeti, tarihi devirlerde Ermenistan olarak adlandırılan bölgenin küçük bir kesimini kapsar. Daha önce Sovyetler Birliği'ne ait bir cumhuriyet iken 1991'de bağımsızlığını ilan etmiştir. Batısında Türkiye, kuzeyinde Gürcistan, doğusunda Azerbaycan ve güneyinde İran bulunur. Denize kıyısı yoktur. 2006 itibariyle nüfus 2.975.000'dir. Başkenti Erivan'dır.Ermenistan Adının TarihiBir coğrafi tanım olarak Arminiya veya Armaniya adına en erken Eski Fars (Pers) imparatoru I. Darius'un yak. MÖ 510 tarihli Bisutun Anıtı'nda rastlanır. MÖ 399 yılında bölgeyi gezerek ayrıntılı tasvirler yapan Yunanlı tarihçi Ksenofon'un eserinde ülke adı Armenia olarak geçer.Strabon Coğrafya'sında (MS 1. yüzyıl) ve Roma İmparatorluğu'nun idari bölünümünde Armenia sınırları şöyle tanımlanır: Batıda Fırat nehri, güneyde Güneydoğu Toros sıradağları, güneydoğuda Hakkâri dağları ve Urmiye Gölü, kuzeydoğuda Sevan Gölü ve Karabağ, kuzeyde Çıldır Gölü ve Doğu Karadeniz Dağları. Ortaçağ Arap kaynaklarında aynı bölgenin adı Armaniyya veya Ermeniyye (Ar: أرمنية) olarak geçer. Eski Türkçe metinlerde Ermeniyye adına 15. yüzyıla kadar rastlanır.Yüzyıllarca sadece tarihi bir isim olarak hatırlanan "Armenia/Ermenistan" adı, 19. yüzyılın milliyetçi politikaları döneminde tekrar güncel anlam kazanmıştır.Modern Ermenistan'ın DoğuşuTarihi Ermenistan'ın bir kısmı olan bugünkü Ermenistan İran'ın Revan (Erivan) vilayetinden ibarettir. 1827'de Paskeviç yönetimindeki Rus ordusu tarafından fethedilmiş ve 1828'de Türkmençayı Antlaşması ile resmen Rus egemenliğine girmiştir. Aynı yıl reorganize edilen idari birime Armyanskii Oblast (Ermeni Vilayeti) adı verilmiştir. Vilayetin o tarihte %18 dolayında olan Ermeni nüfusu, Rus yönetimi tarafından davet edilen İran Ermenilerinin göçü sonucunda 20. yüzyıl başında %48 düzeyini bulmuştur. Birinci Dünya Savaşı sırasında Osmanlı İmparatorluğundan mülteci olarak gelen Ermenilerle birlikte bu sayı %70'lere ulaşmıştır.1917 Devrimi'nden sonra Rus Devletinin çöküşü üzerine kurulan Transkafkasya Federasyonu 28 Mayıs 1918'de dağılmış ve Erivan'da Ermenistan Demokratik Cumhuriyeti ilan edilmiştir. İkibuçuk yıl süren bağımsızlığı sırasında ekonomik, askeri ve siyasi krizlerle sarsılan cumhuriyet 1920 Kasım ayında Türk ve Sovyet ordularının eş zamanlı işgaline uğrayarak bağımsızlığını kaybetmiş ve 2 Aralık 1920'de Ermenistan Sovyet Cumhuriyeti adıyla Sovyetler Birliği'ne katılmıştır.Ermenistan CumhuriyetiSovyetler Birliği'nin son döneminde 1988 yılında Ermenistan Sovyet Cumhuriyeti ile Azerbaycan arasında, Dağlık Karabağ (Nagornıy Karabağ) bölgesi üzerinde anlaşmazlık çıktı. Azerbaycan'a ait fakat nüfus çoğunluğu Ermenilerden oluşan bir özerk bölge olan Dağlık Karabağ'da Ermeniler ayaklanarak ayrı bir cumhuriyet ilan ettiler. Ermenistan ile Azerbaycan savaşın eşiğine gelirken, her iki cumhuriyette Azeri ve Ermeni azınlıklar şiddet olaylarına maruz kaldı. Çatışmalar sürerken Mayıs 1990'da Yeni Ermenistan Ordusu kurularak Sovyet ordusundan fiilen bağımsız bir yapıya kavuşturuldu.Sovyetler Birliğinin dağılması üzerine Ermenistan 23 Ağustos 1991'de bağımsızlığını ilan etti. Şiddetlenen Ermeni-Azeri savaşında Ermenistan, D. Karabağ ile Ermenistan arasındaki Laçin Koridoru'nu da işgal ederek D. Karabağ'ı fiilen kendisine ilhak etti. Azerbaycan'ın Ermenistan'a uyguladığı ekonomik ambargo, ülkede büyük sıkıntılara yol açtı. 1993'te Türkiye de Ermenistan'a karşı ambargoya katıldı. D. Karabağ savaşı 1994'te Rusya'nın empoze ettiği ateşkesle sona erdi.Halen Ermenistan uluslararası topluluk tarafından Azerbaycan'a ait sayılan toprakların %14'ünü (D. Karabağ ve Laçin Koridoru dahil) işgal altında bulundurmaktadır. Türkiye bu durumu gerekçe göstererek Ermenistan Cumhuriyeti ile diplomatik ilişki kurmaktan kaçınmış ve bu ülke ile sınırlarını trafiğe kapatmıştır.Ermenistan siyasetinde D. Karabağ kökenli siyasi örgüt ve kişilerin egemenliğine dikkat çeken bazı gözlemciler, Ermenistan'ın D. Karabağ'ı değil, aksine D. Karabağ'ın Ermenistan'ı ilhak ettiğini ileri sürmüşlerdir.

HOPA

Laz are called by neighbouring Hemşinli (islamized ethnic Armenians) Con (Tsan, Tson, Jan) or something like that. Is that correct?.. In return, Laz people call Hemşinli with their "proper" name -- Ermeni (no translation needed, right?)People in that area are reluctant to say who they are for very obvious reasons: the society is far from being friendly to non-Turks. So, for example, if you ask Hemşinli person a question: who are you? The first answer will be "I am a Turk". "Sure?" "Yes absolutely, some will say, we are Cepni, we are Baş-Turks, the original ones, the real Turks, our ancestors came from Middle Asia." Ok."Then why do you use a language different from Turkish?", you may ask They may reply, "we lived for so long among Armenians and we adapted their language". Hmmm. I don't buy that argument. Well, after they trust you little more they may open up and tell you something about being associated with Anatolians, Kurds, Pontians. More precisely, they will call themselves Laz. Even more precisely, Hemşinli. And deep inside, they would know, Hemşinli speak Armenian language, so after all they must be Armenians... Very deep inside.

Monday, November 12, 2007

PONTIAN GENOCIDE

May 19 has been recognized by the Greek parliament as the day of remembrance of the Pontian Greek Genocide by the Turks. There are various estimates of the toll. Records kept mainly by priests show a minimum 350,000 Pontian Greeks exterminated through systematic slaughter by Turkish troops and Kurdish para-militaries. Other estimates, including those of foreign missionaries, spoke of 500,000 deaths, most through deportation and forced marches into the Anatolian desert interior. Thriving Greek cities like Pafra, Samsous, Kerasous, and Trapezous, at the heart of Pontian Hellenism on the coast of the Black Sea, endured recurring massacres and deportations that eventually destroyed their Greek population.The opening bell of the genocide came with the order in 1914 for all Pontian men between the ages of 18 and 50 to report for military duty. Those who "refused" or "failed" to appear, the order provided, were to be summarily shot. The immediate result of this firman (decree) was the murder of thousands of the more prominent Pontians, whose name appeared on lists of "undesirables" already prepared by the Young Turk regime.
Added thousands ended up in the notorious Labor Battalions (amele taburu). In a precursor of what was to become a favorite practice in Hitler's extermination camps, Pontian men were driven from their homes into the wilderness to perform hard labor and expire from exhaustion, thirst, and disease. German advisors of the Turkish regime (what a surprise!) suggested that Pontian populations be forced into internal exile. This "advise" led directly to the emptying of hundreds of Pontian villages and the forced march of women, children, and old people to nowhere. The details of this systematic slaughter of the Pontians by the Turks were dutifully recorded by both German and Austrian diplomats.
The Pontians, unlike Greeks elsewhere in Asia Minor, did try to organize armed resistance against their butchers. Pontian guerrilla bands had appeared in the mountains of Santa as early as 1916. Brave leaders, like Capitan Stylianos Kosmidis, even hoisted the flag of independent Pontus in the hope of help from Greece and Russia (which never arrived). But the struggle was unequal. The Turkish army, assisted by the blood-thirsty Tsets, cuthroats of mostly Kurdish extraction, attacked and destroyed undefended Pontian villages in revenge.
On May 19, 1919, chief butcher Kemal himself disembarked at Samsous to begin organizing the final phase of the Pontian genocide. Assisted by his German advisers, and surrounded by his own band of killers -- monsters like Topal Osman, Refet Bey, Ismet Inonu, and Talaat Pasha -- the founder of "modern" Turkey applied himself to the destruction of the Pontian Greeks. With the Greek army engaged in Anatolia, a new wave of deportations, mass killings, and "preventative" executions destroyed the remnants of Pontian Hellenism. The plan worked with deadly precision. In the Amasia province alone, with a pre-war population of some 180,000, records show a final tally of 134,000 people liquidated.
The memory of the Pontian Genocide is dedicated to all those in Europe and the U.S. who shamelessly advocate admitting Turkey into the EU and describe it as a "democracy." They are all blind as they are shameless.
AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN ARCHIVES REVEAL THE CRIME
24 July 1909 German Ambassador in Athens Wangenheim to Chancellor Bulow quoting Turkish Prime Minister Sefker Pasha: "The Turks have decided upon a war of extermination against their Christian subjects."
26 July 1909 Sefker Pasha visited Patriarch Ioakeim III and tells him: "we will cut off your heads, we will make you disappear. It is either you or us who will survive."
14 May 1914 Official document from Talaat Bey Minister of the Interior to Prefect of Smyrna: The Greeks, who are Ottoman subjects, and form the majority of inhabitants in your district, take advantage of the circumstances in order to provoke a revolutionary current, favourable to the intervention of the Great Powers. Consequently, it is urgently necessary that the Greeks occupying the coast-line of Asia Minor be compelled to evacuate their villages and install themselves in the vilayets of Erzerum and Chaldea. If they should refuse to be transported to the appointed places, kindly give instructions to our Moslem brothers, so that they shall induce the Greeks, through excesses of all sorts, to leave their native places of their own accord. Do not forget to obtain, in such cases, from the emigrants certificates stating that they leave their homes on their own initiative, so that we shall not have political complications ensuing from their displacement.
31 July 1915 German priest J. Lepsius: "The anti-Greek and anti-Armenian persecutions are two phases of one programme - the extermination of the Christian element from Turkey.
16 July 1916 German Consul Kuchhoff from Amisos to Berlin: "The entire Greek population of Sinope and the coastal region of the county of Kastanome has been exiled. Exile and extermination in Turkish are the same, for whoever is not murdered, will die from hunger or illness."
30 November 1916 Austrian consul at Amisos Kwiatkowski to Austria Foreign Minister Baron Burian: "on 26 November Rafet Bey told me: "we must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians . . . on 28 November. Rafet Bey told me: "today I sent squads to the interior to kill every Greek on sight." I fear for the elimination of the entire Greek population and a repeat of what occurred last year" (meaning the Armenian genocide).
13 December 1916 German Ambassador Kuhlman to Chancellor Hollweg in Berlin: "Consuls Bergfeld in Samsun and Schede in Kerasun report of displacement of local population and murders. Prisoners are not kept. Villages reduced to ashes. Greek refugee families consisting mostly of women and children being marched from the coasts to Sebasteia. The need is great."
19 December 1916 Austrian Ambassador to Turkey Pallavicini to Vienna lists the villages in the region of Amisos that were being burnt to the ground and their inhabitants raped, murdered or dispersed.
20 January 1917 Austrian Ambassador Pallavicini: "the situation for the displaced is desperate. Death awaits them all. I spoke to the Grand Vizier and told him that it would be sad if the persecution of the Greek element took the same scope and dimension as the Armenia persecution. The Grand Vizier promised that he would influence Talaat Bey and Emver Pasha."
31 January 1917 Austrian Chancellor Hollweg's report: ". . . the indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks.
Thus, by government decree 1,500,000 Armenians and 300,000 Pontian Greeks were annihilated through exile, starvation, cold, illness, slaughter, murder, gallows, axe, and fire. Those who survived fled never to return. The Pontians now lie scattered all over the world as a result of the genocide and their unique history, language (the dialect is a valuable link between ancient and modern Greek), and culture are endangered and face extinction.
A double crime was committed - genocide and the uprooting of a people from their ancestral homelands of three millenia. The Christian nations were not only witnesses to this horrible and monstrous crime, which remains unpunished, but for reasons of political expediency and self interest have, by their silence, pardoned the criminal. The Ottoman and Kemalist Turks were responsible for the genocide of the Pontian people, the most heinous of all crimes according to international law. The international community must recognise this crime.

Hagia Sophia

The above cited article by The Associated Press refers to the death of a Turk national who had styled himself as a patriarch of a Turkish Orthodox Church in contradiction to the centuries old Church of Constantinople.
The present commentary responds to two remarks made in the article. The first remark states that, Istanbul, Constantinople in Greek, was once the capital of the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire . . . .
It must be made clear that both names, Constantinople and Istanbul, are Greek in origin (see "to Constantinople" above). Furthermore, it must also be made clear that Constantinople was from the time of its founding by Constantine the Great the governing city of the whole Roman Empire. This fact was never retracted, and except for the Fall of the great city, the latter still retains its unalterable historical continuity and preeminence. The city of Rome later regained significance and growth as a result of subsequent political divisions that affected the secular and religious spheres. This caused the eventual dichotomy known as the East and the West or the Greek and the Latin sectors. The fall of the Empire occurred only when the great city of Constantinople fell on Tuesday, May 29, 1453 and not prior. The aftermath of this encompassing cultural and historical continuity and influence is manifested today in The Americas, NEW BYZANTIUM.
The second remark attempts the following: Turkey dismisses the Ecumenical Patriarch's role as head of Orthodox Churches around the world, recognizing him only as head of Turkey's dwindling Greek community, which has shrunk to less than 5,000 in a city of more than 12 million.
The Associated Press would serve humanity's cause well by discerning and exposing furtive disinformation that helps to promote desired agendas: What importance is there in a Turk—an irrelevant and intrusive element—and what is his role to be able to dictate the religious authority of the head of the CHRISTIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH? It is on account of the unique nature of this rooted and ancient Church, and only through the free will and choice of the faithful everywhere, that the Patriarch of Constantinople enjoys first honor as the authentic ecumenical Spiritual Head. Such bestowal can only be consented to but NEVER negated by the Turk. Neither are . . . symbolic snakes acceptable: alleged to coil around Constantinople—their penultimate stop—en route to their longed for destination, Jerusalem.
In addition, why are not the genocidal acts and religious persecutions by the Turk brought to the conscious and constant attention of the world—acts and persecutions that form the true basis of the above characterized dwindling Greek community? This should not be presented as a normal or natural population development but as a true crime that it is.
Consider the following conditions in Asia Minor (Turkey [?]), in view of the planned ethnic elimination that continues unabated today. In 1923 there were 100,000 Greeks resident in Constantinople and 90.000 Muslims in Greece's Western Thrace (see map above). Today, there are 120,000 Muslims in Greece and only 2,500 in Turkey. In 1955, Turk democratic Prime Minister, Adnan Menderes, instituted pogroms against the Greeks of Constantinople. Christian Orthodox Churches have been destroyed and vandalized. The Patriarchate has been bombed repeatedly. Also consider the atrocity of the invasion and present day illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus by the Turk. Consider also the intimidation tactics by the Turk against the United States of America.