By Rifat Bali
We publish below chapter IX of Rifat Bali’s book A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Doenmes or Crypto-Jews of Turkey in its entirety.
Rifat Bali was born in Istanbul in 1948. Between the years 1970-1995 he worked first as a manager then as a managing partner in a private company. In 2001 he graduated from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes of the Sorbonne University. Since 1996 he has been researching and publishing in the field of non-Muslim minorities of Turkey, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories, the social and cultural transformation of the Turkish society and Doenmes (Crypto Jews). He is a research fellow of the Alberto Benveniste Center for Sephardic Studies and Culture based in the Religious Studies Department of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne (Paris) and a member of Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Research Center. He is fluent in English, French and Ladino. Currently he is serving libraries through his company Libra Kitapcilik ve Yayincilik with monographs and serials published in Turkey.
To obtain a copy of A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Doenmes or Crypto-Jews of Turkey, contact Libra Books at rifat.bali@gmail.com.
***
Another interesting and recent product of the anti-Dönme mindset, a worldview that sees those belonging to or descended from this group as a secret, select and extremely powerful branch of Judaism that controls Turkey, is the claim that is was not the Turks, but the Sabbateans, who both planned and implemented the 1915 Deportation resulting in the mass slaughter and death of most of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population. According to this view the idea of mass deportation and slaughter emerged because the country’s Jewish bourgeoisie wished to take control of the empire’s economic life, and, since many of the leaders of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress were of Dönme origin (e.g. Talât Pasha and Dr. Nâzım), they proposed this plan to the committee as a way of eliminating their Armenian competitors. An example is Christopher Jon Bjerkness, an amateur historian of science. A 543-page document entitled The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians which he posted on the internet where he claims as the title suggests, that it was the Crypto-Jews who were the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.[1] Since this opinion has been shared by a wide audience among Armenian and Turkish Islamist circles, Khatchig Mouradian, the editor of The Armenian Weekly, an American-Armenian weekly newspaper, and Dr. Nilgün Gülcan, a researcher working at the International Strategic Center Research Organisation (Ankara),[2] felt obliged to discount such claims. Mouradian in his article stated that:[3]
Having written several articles on Jewcy about the bigotry and racism of some Jews and Turks regarding the Armenians and their suffering, I now feel obliged to address one of the conspiracy theories that has been passed from generation to generation—and shared by some Armenians—for a few decades at least. It goes something like this:
The plan to exterminate the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was conceived and implemented by Jews, Zionists and Freemasons. You want proof? Several leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—that committed the genocide—were Jews converted to Islam (the Turkish term used to refer to them is Donme) and freemasons. Those who present these arguments, of course, set out several reasons that might have prompted the Jews to exterminate the Armenians, ranging from jealousy (for example, the Armenians were successful merchants, even more so than the Jews) to greater geo-political schemes sometimes involving the domination of the world. In some cases, this conspiracy theory is amalgamated with a similar theory prevalent among some Arabs that the Young Turk revolt of 1908 against the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II was also a Jewish and Freemasonic conspiracy because the sultan was vehemently opposed the settling of Jews in Palestine, while the Young Turks were allegedly more inclined to implement the Zionist designs.
While no professional historian of the Armenian genocide has taken this conspiracy theory seriously, there has unfortunately been no separate academic analysis as well to expose its origins and the reasons of its persistence, making it possible for this theory to survive on the margins of Armenian life.
A quick glance of those in Turkey who espouse this view will show that they can be classified into three main groups: a) numerous columnists from the Islamist press; b) a group of Turkish-Armenian journalists, most notably the recently assassinated[4] Editor-in-Chief of the Armenian community’s semi-official organ Agos,[5]Hrant Dink, the paper’s columnist Markar Esayan and Levon Panos Dabağyan, a writer for the Turkish nationalist paper Önce Vatan; c) Ilgaz Zorlu, a young Turk who, after ‘going public’ with an admission of his Dönme origins in the late 1990s, has been on this basis accorded widespread media attention and whose every public statement has enjoyed an extraordinary level of credibility;[6] and finally d) the Marxist Economics Professor Yalçın Küçük, whose fame has spread in recent years as a result of his numerous publications on the Sabbateans.
a. The Islamist Press
Akit Editor-in-Chief Abdurrahman Dilipak
During the fall of 2000 the Turkish press was completely preoccupied with the debate then transpiring in the U.S. House of Representatives over the House Resolution 398 “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide”. During this period Abdurrahman Dilipak, the Editor-in-Chief of the radical Islamist daily Akit wrote a column in which he raised the subject of the genocide and role of the Sabbateans in it:
Is there such a thing as Sabbateanism or isn’t there? Some say there is, others claim that there’s no such thing, while still others say that there once was, but it no longer exists.
Sabbateanism is a subject which is not written about, outlined or spoken of very often. But it’s not that there aren’t some works from which the curious can acquire some general information about the topic. For example, there are Abdurrahman Küçük’s work titled Dönmeler,[7] Galante’s work,[8] and the National Education [Ministry] and [The Presidency of] Religious Affairs’ İslâm [A]nsiklopedileri.
What is generally agreed upon [by all of these authors] is that [Sabbateanism] is a secret movement like Freemasonry, it is connected to the Jewish faith, Kabbala and its traditions, based on the Messianic claim [of Sabbatai Sevi], and, having originated in Salonica, is centered in Izmir and Salonica. It is a sect or a [dervish] order.
What we’re talking about is an unknown reality of this country.
In fact, we do not know enough about the Armenians, the Greeks, the Syriac Christians or the Yezidis either.
Now, as the debate of the claims of a[n Armenian] genocide has begin in America, the question [of the Sabbateans] has once more come to the agenda in this regard. A good researcher will easily see that the true address for claims of [responsibility for] the genocide are neither the Ottoman [Empire] nor the Republic of Turkey. The role in this affair of those Jewish, Masonic and Sabbatean Unionists within the Committee of Union and Progress is a well-known fact.
So why doesn’t anyone want to see it as a fact? The reality of it is painfully clear.[9]
Six years later, upon the French Parliament’s passage of a law outlawing the denial of the truth of the Armenian genocide, Dilipak would once again pick up this line of argument, implying, among others, Jewish and Dönme responsibility for the Armenian genocide with the statement “The Armenian question is a subject that not only concerns the Turks, the Kurds and Jews are also involved in this affair. The Sabbateans are also [involved]. So, for that matter, are the Russians, the Americans, the British, the French and the Greeks. We will [soon] understand that none of us are without blame”.[10] In 2007 the day after the House Resolution 106 entitled “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution” was accepted by The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives Dilipak referred again in his column to this matter and stated that “if we discuss in depth the Armenian problem, it would become apparent that those who did this in the Ottoman Empire were Committee of Union and Progress bands made up of Jews, Freemason-Sabataist mongrels”.[11]
Millî Gazete Columnist Mehmed Şevket Eygi
The question of the Armenian genocide and Dönme responsibility for it was also recently taken up by the columnist of the Islamist daily Millî Gazete,[12] Mehmed Şevket Eygi. In a late-2005 column Eygi wrote:
The events of 1915 were planned by the Dönme. [They were carried out] because at that time the commerce, the crafts production and capital of Anatolia were in great measure in the hands of the Armenians. The Dönmes wanted to replace them in the economic, commercial and finance-related fields.
Were some atrocities committed against the Armenians? They were, but it wasn’t the Muslim Turks who committed them. As to those who did carry out [such acts], those who are well-versed in history, who know the true nature of the[se] events, are aware [of who is responsible].
(1) The Armenian question is the concern of the Dönmes.
(2) [These actions] were performed as a reprisal for the actions carried out by the Armenian armed gangs incited by aggressive missionaries. Let it not be forgotten how, when the Russian army entered Anatolia, entered Van, some Armenians who were enemies of the very state to which they belonged carried out barbarities against the Muslim [inhabitant]s.
(3) In general, those Armenians who had been deported were killed and robbed by other, non-Turkish groups.
The columnist then concludes his piece with the following ‘note’:
I suggest that you read the article titled “GİZLİ BİR SAVAŞ: YAHUDİLER ERMENİLERE KARŞI” [‘A secret war: the Jews against the Armenians’] found at the Internet site for which I give the web address below. In this two-page article it is claimed that the planners of the Armenian events of 1915 were Dönmes, or Crypto-Jews. http://mitglied.lycos.de/goezelele53.[13]
The web article to which Eygi refers his readers was written in Turkish in 2001 and is presented below in full:
In this article of mine, I wish to explain to you some truths about the Armenian Question with the intention of at least partially removing the scales from your eyes:
I want to speak of two large minority [populations] that competed with one another within the Ottoman Empire for centuries, that is to say, the Jews and the Armenians. The disputes between these two minorities derived not from the land dispute [that, originating with] the Young Turks [and continuing] down to the establishment of the Union and Progress Party, but with the struggles between these two groups for commercial advantage. The Armenians were always much more capable artisans than the Jews and [so the latter] did not engage in commerce apart from through fraud and dubious dealing or by creating all manner of division and dissent against their competitors, because the society was not familiar with their culture. That’s how it was with the Jews, it was part of their ideology; that’s what it meant to be Jewish.
In the 1870s two branches of Judaism, the Sabbateans and the Jews,[14] began to organize among themselves and gain in strength. Through the assistance of the French, Italians and other foreign powers they began to understand the dimensions of their own united power in the economic field. They began to [work toward] destroy[ing] the [Ottoman] Empire and planting the seeds of an entirely new state that they themselves would establish. But naturally, as part of this plan they could not be on friendly terms with the Armenians, who were their biggest competitors. For this reason you cannot find Armenians among the Young Turks or the [Committee of] Union and Progress. They embarked upon preparations for the whittling down and elimination of the Armenians. What they intended to do was to eliminate the Armenians, who for centuries had established a powerful minority community within the various cities and centers of Anatolia, and to establish a state in which the control and administration would be in their own hands. This was what Sabbatai Sevi had intended in the 17th century. The Armenians would be eliminated and they themselves, that is, the Sabbateans, the majority of whom were wealthy and powerful, would come from the Balkans to Anatolia and settle there. In this way the Jews would also be rid of the their strongest competitors.
The Sabbateans attempted not to make themselves noticed within the other communities of the Balkans. If [these] other communities sensed that the Sabbateans were different in any way, they didn’t do a thing about it. The majority of persons in the[se] other communities were very poor. Power and money were in the hands of the Sabbateans. The visible behavior and other characteristics peculiar to the Sabbateans appeared to [those of] other nations simply as behaviors that derived from their material wealth. But it was not so. On the contrary. The Sabbateans were culturally very different and they grew rich from acting in partnership with the Jews, and because, in fact, they were Jews.
There were Sabbateans who attained command and high rank within the army. Because the army was, in the eyes of the people, the savior [of the nation], they submitted to the dictates of its high officers without knowing what was being done or what it’s objectives were. Upon the orders of the [Committee of] Union and Progress, most of the Armenians were either killed in their villages or, while being driven in utter misery and deprivation to Lebanon and Syria, died on the journey.
The Armenians all know that those who killed their ancestors were the Young Turks/Union and Progress—in other words, the Jews (Musevi) and Sabbateans, who descended from the Jewish (Yahudi) race. The killers may have been Turkish on the outside, but on the inside they were in fact Jewish. Although the Sabbateans all possess Turkish names and cloak themselves in a Muslim identity, they [i.e., the Armenians] are able to make this differentiation because in the Ottoman Empire for centuries there was no interaction between them and the Muslim Turks. They all know very well with whom they interacted and they were not deceived in the least. Since the appearance of Sabbateanism the Armenians even wrote books about them. In this sense in a memorial commemorating the Genocide that was opened last year in France, they even inscribed upon this monument that it was not the Turks but the Union and Progress or Young Turks (in other words, the Sabbateans and Jews) who carried out this genocide.
Have you ever noticed that the ASALA has never killed a single Turk who descends from [true] Muslim roots? It is said that without exception only Sabbateans are accepted into the Foreign Ministry. Everybody knows this. Turkish youth who are of Muslim origin are not accepted into the Foreign Ministry so that they won’t notice the presence of Sabbateans, won’t discern their games, and [therefore] won’t tell others outside the ministry. Now think for a minute: why has the ASALA up to now only attacked [Turkish] diplomats and other Foreign Ministry employees? The reason is simple: it is because they know that those who work in the Foreign Ministry are the descendents of those ordered and are responsible for the genocide of their ancestors.
For the past years there have been a number of panel discussions on the Armenian Genocide on the ATV, Show TV, NTV, Kanal D and BRT [television channels]. For some reason, all of those who are called to be discussants are Sabbateans. Professor Eser Karakaş,[15] for instance…It is interesting that he himself carries [a surname that is identical with] the name of the Karakaş group, one of the three branches of the Sabbateans. What is this individual’s knowledge and interest in the Armenian Genocide? We knew him as a professor of business management, was it history in which he specialized? And why did he come out so strongly against the statement by his co-panelist Hürriyet’s Paris correspondent Madam [Nurdan] Bernard, that “the more young people who apply to the Foreign Ministry, the more persons will be accepted”? On another interesting note, a student at Harvard, who has been characterized by the media as “our own young, super nationalist [Turkish] girl” actually comes from a Sabbatean family.[16] It will be recalled that she allegedly stood up to French parliamentarians! She [allegedly ] taught [them] a lesson! I wonder, did the French parliamentarians even hear what she said? What wonderful scales have been placed on the eyes of the Turkish nation, and how masterfully those who have placed these scales have blinded them [to the truth]….
The Armenians are particularly aware of the Sabbatean-Greek rapprochement that has been going on for the past ten years. An example of this increasing intimacy, which has been fostered within [the framework of] Freemasonry, was seen on Show-TV. Let’s see how long before we actually notice this rapprochement….[17]
Mehmet Kamış, writer for Zaman
Mehmet Kamış, a writer for the daily Zaman, which is owned by the ‘moderate’ Islamist community of Fethullah Gülen, speaks of the Armenian deportations, but refers to it chief architect, Unionist Interior Minister Talât Pasha, as a ‘Sabbatean’:
Talât Pasha, whom Soner Yalçın characterizes as a ‘Sabbatean’ in his book Efendi, did not only bring all of these things upon our heads; instead, by exaggerating the actions that he took when writing in his notebook, which has now appeared I don’t know how many years since his death, he has continued to cause us troubles.[18]
Kamış goes on in this column to depict the question of the Armenian massacres as the problem of Talat Pasha, whom he takes pains to portray as a Sabbatean: “The Armenian [D]eportation”, he claims, “is not a problem for the Ottomans and the Turks. It is the problem of Talat Pasha and his ilk”.
İbrahim Karagül, Foreign Policy Columnist for Yeni Şafak
Another Islamist writer who has broached the question of who conceived of and planned the Armenian Deportation is İbrahim Karagül, a commentator on foreign policy issues for the daily Yeni Şafak, an Islamist daily owned by the Albayraklar Group, which is known for its close ties with the ruling Justice and Development Party, (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP). In a piece on the Armenian question that appeared in May, 2005 Karagül states:
There are no aspects of the Armenian [D]eportation and genocide claims that have not already been debated. Turkey’s relations with the rest of the world have continually be framed within the parameters of this painful debate. While the United States and the European powers have repeatedly employed the genocide claim as the most effective means of pushing Turkey into a corner, Turkey itself continues to hope for help against these claims from the Jewish lobby in the United States.
Karagül then presents his readers with three sources for consideration:
1) an article by Joseph Brewda published in 1994 and which appears on the website of The Schiller Institute, named after the 18th century German poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller and established by the American politician and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche and his wife Helga Zepp LaRouche. In his article, Brewda claims that the American Jewish organization B’nai B’rith took control of the Middle East by means of Dönme, Zionist and Freemasonic members of the Committee of Union and Progress.[19]
2) a web article by Clifford Shack claiming that the famous American [sic] Jewish Rothschild family concocted the Armenian Deportation with the aim of gaining control of the Middle Eastern oil reserves.[20]
3) An article by the Armenian American Jack Manuelian, who is also the author of the book Nostradamus: Predictions of World War III (distributed by an American publisher known for its ‘conspiracy theory’ works). Manuelian claims—largely on the basis of the two aforementioned articles—that the Armenian Deportation was carried out by the Dönmes.[21]
After making frequent reference to these three sources, Karagül hedges his bets:
I’m simply sharing [this information] with my readers…I’m not claiming that these [claims] are true. But there is a sensitive question that I have not been able to answer: Are we, the people who live on this patch of earth, being forced to pay the price for the sins of others? We all notice the dark clouds that hover over Turkey. For the sake of this country we will all struggle against these with all our might. But I wonder: are we only doing ourself evil by acting so? I mean, who is defending whom here? The subject impels us to come face to face with ourselves….[22]
Karagül’s piece would in the following days be widely quoted by the Islamist daily Millî Gazete,[23] and only Engin Ardıç of the centrist daily Akşam would offer any criticism of the Yeni Şafak writer’s claims:
In recent times Turkey has been experiencing a ‘Sabbatean’ crisis. Certain ‘eccentric thinkers’ in possession of questionable mental states have been tossing a Sabbatean stone in the well; no one has any intention of pulling it out again—and the fact is, no one could [once it’s been thrown]. On the contrary, there are those who have something to gain by having this stone remain there, and who are attempting to quickly convert it into ‘a series of articles, [which will lead] to increased sales and [thus, more] money’….that is shameful.
Let me quickly explain for the psychopaths that I have no connection, either close or distant, with Judaism, Sabbateanism or ‘Dönme-ism’. That said, I also don’t believe that these are a condition of which one need be ashamed. But some consider it so strange that I would devote attention to questions like the concentration camps, genocide and such, that they delight in searching out alternate reasons for this [behavior]; so much so that one of my Jewish readers even said “O.K., Engin Bey, [it’s out of a love for] humanity and whatnot. We got it. But really, why are you so interested in these topics?” I wonder: did he think I would ultimately turn out to be a ‘dönme’?
The word ‘dönme’ is used in this country as a term of opprobrium. And because in recent years in particular it has also been used in the sense of ‘a person who changes their sex’ [i.e., a transsexual], it also conjures up all manner of negative associations.
The person who has ‘converted’ to Islam, meaning he or she has come from another religion and chosen Islam is not to be debased—on the contrary, they are to be exalted and embraced. To say such things like ‘He used to belong to another religion, and only became a real human because of us’ either to their face or behind their back is absolutely disgraceful.
And so among us [the word] ‘dönme’ [i.e., ‘convert’] is an insult…And the one who is doing this is an old Marxist![24] Go, figure…
Yes, it’s true. The masonic lodges of Salonica in particular played a role—not in the founding of the Committee for Union and Progress, but in its transformation into a [political] party and, later on, in its coming to power as well. Enver and Cemal were not masons, but Talât was. (As for the situation of [other] leading figures like Bahaettin Şakir, Nazım of Florina and Mithat Şükrü, go and ask it yourself to the Supreme Master [of the freemason lodge] ….But in order to assert that this [organization] was simply ‘the result of a grand conspiracy to take control of the Ottoman [Empire] and the Middle East [as a whole]’ one has to be a few cards short of a full deck!
They may have indeed been able to imagine ‘giving equality and freedom to all of the peoples of the Ottoman [Empire], and meanwhile plucking off an autonomous Jewish province in Palestine’.
Just look: this upstart Armenian, some fellow by the name of Jak Manuelian has asserted that ‘the Sabbateans who wished to seize the economy of the Middle East from the Christians concocted the Armenian deportation’. Whoa, stop right there. The ones who created the Armenian deportation were Turanist and Unionist bureaucracy that wanted to create a [racially] pure and unadulterated fortress, a true homeland that would remain from the shrinking and crumbling [Ottoman] Empire, one last piece of earth in Anatolia in which we could seek refuge.
This policy ‘overlapped’ (as the intellectuals love to say) with this same party’s policy of wishing to take the economy out of the hands of the minorities and giving it to the Turkish nation, or more correctly, of wanted to create a Turkish bourgeoisie, because there were no proper Turkish merchants available [at the time].[25]
Dünden Bugüne Tercüman Columnist Nuh Gönültaş[26]
Several weeks before the Karagül piece the Islamist journalist Nuh Gönültaş, well known for his antisemitic conspiracy theories, published an article that is worth quoting in full:
Bediüzzaman fought against the Armenian armed gangs and the Russian army, but he never harmed civilians. Bediüzzaman freed the thousands of Armenian children who were collected over the course of these battles and returned them to their families in Russia. This action was an important lesson by example for the Armenians and they were astounded at the ethics of the Muslims. In response the Armenian militia heads abandoned their custom of slaughtering the Muslim children [that fell into their hands] and vowed, “If Molla Said will not slaughter our wives and children and instead turn them over to us, from this point on we will not slaughter Muslim children”. One blizzard-filled night, during a battle with the Russian and Armenian soldiers over the city of Bitlis, [Bediüzzaman] broke his leg while jumping from a wall into a ditch in an attempt to hide under a bridge and remained there with his students for two days, lying in a drainage canal amid the ice. They were finally forced to surrender so as not to freeze to death.
One can read in the book Tarihçe-i Hayat’tan ve Bilinmeyen Taraflarıyla Bediüzzaman Said Nursi how he rescued a great number of Armenian civilians from the hands of Muslim militiamen who were going to kill them. That’s but a summary of one part of the event that concerns Bediüzzaman. But there is a very interesting duplicity in regard to the question of the Armenian Genocide. Unfortunately it was the Armenians and the Kurds who did this. Although the Armenians and the Armenian terror organizations know full well which particular community having an ‘international’ reach within the Committee of Union and Progress helped to transform the ‘deportation’ operation into a tragedy, and which later killed many of its important leaders, they do not state this openly. Why not? Because today, just like back then and every time since then, it is the same center of power that nourishes the Armenian Diaspora. They cannot go any further than this center.
Tell me, who gave to Professor Vahakn Dadrian, [an Armenian-American professor] who has devoted his life to obtaining official recognition for the Armenian Genocide, a prize “for the contributions that he has made to genocide studies”? The International Jewish Holocaust Conference. They held their gathering this year in Florida in the United States on March 5-8. Five years ago this crew demanded that Turkey accept “the Armenian genocide as a reality whose histor[ical] truth is undeniable”.[27] Among the names [of those receiving this award] is Eli Wisel [sic], a survivor of the Auschwitz [sic] [extermination] camp and one of the closest advisors of U.S. Presidents.
So what has happened in recent years to those persons who for years spoke of the Armenian ‘genocide’ and then, at the last moment came to support the Turkish position and withdrew their genocide resolutions from the conference?
The first accusation in this matter was expressed five years ago by Israel’s former National Education Minister Yosi Sarid, thereby causing a diplomatic crisis. [At that time] Sarid said: “In our new history [textbooks] I want to see a lengthy section about genocide and the Armenian genocide must be mentioned openly in this section. This is our duty to you and to ourselves”.[28]
In fact the subject is quite complicated, but it’s not so out of control as all that. In order to be able to understand the Armenian question it is necessary to know [about] the ‘Auspicious Event’, [that is] the elimination of the Janissaries, and how the gang of Jewish community leaders was also eliminated–the same leaders who exploited the Janissary officers during the course of these momentous events, to make them turn over their large rice cauldrons [in revolt], how all their assets were seized, how [all] Jewish influence was removed from the government and how the Armenians were brought in their place.[29]
The disputes between these two minorities derived not from the land dispute [that, originating with] the Young Turks [and continuing] down to the establishment of the Union and Progress Party, but with the struggles between these two groups for commercial advantage. The Armenians were always much more capable artisans than the Jews and because it was not a part of the [ Armenians’] culture they generally did not engage in commerce “by eliminating their competitors by other means”. But that wasn’t the case with their rivals. During the 1870s Ottoman Jewry (including Dönmes (Avdeti) and Masons), which was centered in Salonica began to organize itself and grow in strength. Through the assistance of the French, Italians and other foreign powers they began to understand the dimensions of their own united power in the economic field. They destroyed the [Ottoman] Imperial Dynasty and began planting the seeds of an entirely new state that [in which] they themselves would establish. But their most important rivals, the Armenians, would spoil their plans. Ever since Greek Independence, the Greek Orthodox [Ottoman subject] had formed an enormous problem. But the Armenians were, in contrast to them, “the loyal community”. They had settled in Anatolia and in the capital [i.e., Istanbul]. For this reason you cannot find Armenians among the Young Turks or the C[ommittee of] U[nion and] P[rogress]. In fact, at the beginning there was a fair amount of mutual sympathy [between the two sides], but later on things quickly changed. The CUP’s “steel core” embarked on preparations to eliminate the Armenians. What they intended to do was to drive out the Armenians, who for centuries had established a powerful edifice within the various [population] centers of Anatolia, and to establish a state in which the control and administration would be in their own hands. The Armenians all knew that the ones who “brainwashed”their ancestors were the European states and Russia, along with the great weapon and finance cartels.
Just as [the Armenians] betrayed the Ottoman [Empire] for the Russians during the First World War, the [Kurdish] Peshmerga that trusted Bush the father in 1991 and revolted against Saddam [Hussein], only to be scattered into the mountains by the hundreds of thousands, fell into this same state. The Armenians know full well who the real persons are with whom they have accounts [to settle], but there isn’t a whole lot that they can do about it today. They are in the situation in which a ‘carrot’ has been held out before them yet again. Just as they knew who was behind the events of September 6-7, 1955, and who gained ownership of their property for but a pittance. Indeed, the basic question here is one of ethics, and they can’t say it. They know very well about Dr. Nâzım, Finance Minister Cavid, Talat [Pasha], Cemal [Pasha], CUP Secretary-General Mithat Şükrü Bleda and the “special” connections between this group. Just as they knew about Dr. Yahya Muhlis Bey, the CUP member who, while appearing to be vaccinating the Armenian villages in the Bingöl and Bitlis areas against the contagious diseases, was actually infecting the population with the typhoid and typhus microbes.
It is clear that we have entered into volatile times, but it’s still necessary to be able to be calm and objective about everything. I should remind [my readers] just how much of an incendiary matter the insulting of the [Turkish] flag represented during the Nevruz demonstrations. During the events of September 6-7 [1955], the naive population was driven into Şişli and Bakırköy by such empty boasts as “Atatürk’s house in Salonica has been bombed” and the final elimination of the Armenians and Greeks was carried out. There’s benefit to be had in being cautious![30]
Apart from the fact that Gönültaş has lifted nearly half his piece word-for-word from the aforementioned 2001 web article (see the section on Mehmed Şevket Eygi) while leaving out any overt references to the Dönmes, even at first glance it becomes apparent that the author’s intent is to exonerate Muslim Turks from any responsibility for the Armenian genocide and place the entire blame for the planning and execution of the atrocities on the Sabbateans. Gönültaş doesn’t stop their, however, and even insinuates that they incited the 1955 anti-Greek riots as well, a claim subsequently reiterated by Yalçın Küçük.
Bülent Şahin Erdeğer
Bülent Erdeğer, editor of the journal Kur’an Nesli “Qur’an Generation” of the website with the same name (www.kurannesli.info) and a contributor to the radical Islamist journal Haksöz also seems to believe that the Dönmes were influential in the decision to deport the Armenian population of Anatolia. In a lengthy piece titled “The Armenian Question in the Context of Atrocities and Genocide” he writes:[31]
A rather powerful commercial bourgeoisie was raised up in Salonica. The Salonican dönmes [i.e., the Sabbateans] distinguished themselves quite thoroughly as a commercial bourgeoisie, through their level of culture, their knowledge of languages, the printing houses they established, their newspapers, clubs and special schools. The Dönmes and the Jews both lent their support to the Young Turk movement. They hoped that a change of regime would provide them with the opportunity to destroy the [commercial] monopoly of the Greek and Armenian businessmen in Istanbul. For the sake of their own interests, this burgeoning commercial bourgeoisie was much closer to the Central Powers, to Germany and Austria. In their economic relations with Turkey the British and French generally supported the Greeks and Armenians. As for the Germans, whose economic relations with Turkey were rapidly developing, they showed a greater tendency to support the Jewish and Muslim bourgeoisie. By means of the Masonic Societies ties were established between the leading figures of the [Committee of] Union and Progress and the Salonica Bourgeoisie. It was against just such political conditions and social relations that the 1908 Movement came to fruition.
The movement did not long remain a movement of [army] officers and intellectuals, but also rested on a social foundation, being supported by a commercial bourgeoisie intent on destroying the monopoly in economic life established by the pashas and the wealthy Greek and Armenians. The 3rd army corps commander of the Action Army that marched from Salonica to Istanbul on March 31 [1909] was Hüseyin Hüsnü Pasha. We can see this name appearing on the list of famous Masons that the Masons themselves have provided. The Adjutant Major (Kolağası) of the Action Army was Mustafa Kemal. Whether out of the historical Jewish-Armenian hostility, due to the dominance of the Jewish and Sabbatean elements within the CUP, or as a result of the effort to create a ‘Turkish’ bourgeoisie, the pro-German CUP embarked upon a complete settling of accounts with the problematic Armenians by means of the Armenian genocide. The period was a republican epoch, and in order to sell property to the bourgeoisie it was necessary to have a state like a republic, an ideology like nationalism, a nation like the Turks and a national market like Anatolia…and that is what happened. From the standpoint of both its the leaders and its ideologues, the CUP was a construct stamped first by its Sabbatean and secondly, its Jewish identity—and in that period the Jews needed a state, a country….
During those trying days, the extent of efforts that the Jews living in Istanbul showed on behalf of the Turkist cause was made manifest in the area of supplying the Nationalist Government with intelligence, weapons and other supplies. At the head of those providing services, and especially the provision of intelligence, was Avram Galanti. Çetin Yetkin shares the following information with his readers: “Moreover, let me state that when I appealed to Üzeyir Garih, the businessman about whose father we had obtained snippets of information concerning his involvement in the same type of activities, and asked him whether or not such information existed on this matter, we learned from him that beginning in 1919 his father had worked with Colonel—later, Turkish Ambassador to Vienna and Paris—Behiç (Erkin) Bey in smuggling people to Anatolia and intelligence gathering, and that another person with whom he had had connections was Kara Kemal”. [32]
Erdeğer adds the following warning in one of his footnotes: “Nevertheless, it is important not to forget that it is obvious that the claims of the popular conspiracy theories that have recently emerged about Sabbateanism, whereby all the events are connected to one single cause/Judaism, are both tenuous and [highly] speculative”. However, coming as it does within a lengthy exposition insinuating that it is precisely such a Jewish/Dönme/Masonic cabal that is responsible for the tumultuous events in the Ottoman-Turkish realm during the first quarter of the 20th century, his qualification rings false, and must be seen as nothing more than an attempt to ‘cover himself’ against accusations of subscribing to such theories.
M. Emin Kazcı, writer for Anadolu’da Vakit
M. Emin Kazcı, a writer for the radical Islamist daily Anadolu’da Vakit, also made his contribution to the incestuous, gossipy nature of much of the ‘yellower’ Turkish press by citing the aforementioned articles by Jack Manuelian and Clifford Shack, having read about them in the İbrahim Karagül piece in Yeni Şafak. In a piece in which he explains the reasons of the American Jewish organizations’ support of the position of the Turkish Republic in opposing the latest (January 2007) “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution” (USHR No. 106) submitted to the U.S. Congress, Kazcı writes:
[AK Party] Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül went to America.
As is well known, there is an “Armenian Genocide Resolution” on the agenda of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The matter at hand is that Gül, having contacted various circles within this milieu, is working to convince the concerned parties that Turkey-U.S. relations would be severely hurt should the aforementioned resolution be accepted into law.
According to the reports that have again been appearing in our press, the Jewish lobbies in the U.S. are attempting to block [the passage] of the resolution by exercising their influence in Congress.
In fact, it has long been known that the Jewish lobbies take the position of fully supporting Turkey against the claims of the alleged Armenian genocide.
While some have attempted to portray this stance as “a steadfast love for Turkey”, there is of course no place in the language of international relations for such notions as “best of friends”.
We can safely state that the Jewish lobbies’ coolness toward the Armenians’ genocide claims derives from two general sources. The first of these is the Armenian claims that the Jews and some of their leading companies played a central role in the bringing about of the alleged genocide.
According to the Armenian claims, the Young Turks, who carried out the massacres against them and who—again, according to their claims—were composed primarily of Sabbateans and Masons, were but all pawns. The real power behind all of these was the French Jewish Rothschild family and their war for oil.
In his article titled “The Planned, Organized and Executed Genocide of the Armenians” the Armenian writer Jack Manuelian claims that the Armenian genocide that was carried out between 1915-1923 was planned by the Young Turks who appeared to be Muslims, but who were actually composed of (Sabbatean) Balkan Jews who were members of a secret sect”….
No doubt, to what degree these claims are in agreement with historical truth is a separate issue for debate.
Ultimately, some of these claims have found some resonance within Armenian circles.
Nevertheless, it is not possible to understand the reasons that the Jewish lobby has remained so cool and distant on the question of the “Alleged Armenian Genocide” without knowing these claims that hold the Jews directly “responsible” [for the crime].
The second reason that the Jewish lobbies have distanced themselves from the “Genocide” claims is that, from the strategic viewpoint they find a second claim of a genocide—one that will take place next to their own in the world—to run contrary to their interests.
They do not wish to share with others a weapon that they have used as an extremely effective and useful instrument in the international arena, this much is clear.
Certainly, every approach is important and valuable that would support Turkey’s claims against the Armenian lobbies and the Western powers that support them, who, if we observe their various, shrouded middle and long-range goals, wish to forcibly brand Turkey with the mark of ‘perpetrator of genocide’.
Yet, without getting swept away with unnecessary delusions and emotionality, Turkey who is struggling for its existence within a difficult geography nevertheless has both the right and the duty to know the what and why of things.[33]
Baran writer Fazıl Duygun
The program “No Place for Hate” that was implemented in various communities throughout the United States by the Anti-Defamation League in order to combat racism, antisemitism and bigotry gave rise to a heated and interesting debate in the community of Watertown, Massachusets, home to a large Armenian population. The uproar began in August 2007 when the leaders of the town’s Armenian community declared that they would not be putting the program into effect so long as the ADL refused to publicly recognized the Armenian genocide. During the course of the ensuing recriminations, the call began to be heard within the American Jewish community for ADL National Leader Abraham Foxman to resign.[34] In response, the ADL, which up to that time had referred to the various incidents associated with the Armenian genocide as “massacres”, would begin to change its stance and state that they compromised to the definition of “genocide”.[35] This reformulation of its long-held stance would be met in the Turkish press with expressions of shock, anger and betrayal.[36] Among the many voices sharing these views was the radical Islamist journal Baran, although in contrast to many of the other Turkish publications, the journal asserted that the reasons for the ADL’s volte-face was that the actual perpetrators of the Armenian genocide were Dönmes, and that the Turkish Republic itself was a “Dönme Republic”. Fazıl Duygun, one of the writers for Baran, wrote as much in an article for the journal: [37]
The Jews, and the ADL at their head, have until now rejected the claims of an Armenian genocide. The reason for this is that, by means of the [widespread] propaganda claiming that the Jews are the only ones who’ve been subjected to a genocide, they are able to falsely portray themselves as the sole victims [of such a crime] and this has afforded them a means of political pressure to influence the policies and nations of the world; and until now they have been wildly successful at this. By constantly shielding themselves behind the claim that “antisemitism is being perpetrated”, the Jews have even [attempted to] legitimize the[ir] butcheries in Palestine and the massacre operations [carried out] by the Mossad against the independence movements fighting against Israel and Jewish imperialism! Nevertheless, this weapon will now be taken from their hands, and as a result of the Armenian Genocide Draft Resolution that they have been forced to accept, they may well find themselves as defendants [against charges of genocide].
And this, because those who carried out the Armenian massacres were the Committee of Union and Progress, which an organization of the Jewish Dönmes, and the leaders of this party were also members of famous masonic lodges. The petroleum trusts of the period, like Rockfeller and Nobel (both of them were Jewish), saw the Armenians as their enemies. Armenians lived in the Promised Lands, where the petroleum was located.[38] The Armenians were then one of the greatest obstacles laying before the Jews in their attempt to control these lands. [Moreover,] the Armenians, as members of the Orthodox Church, one of the more fundamentally and fiercely anti-Jewish sects of Christianity, had to be eliminated, one way or another. Immediately after the Armenians had been ‘cleansed’ by means of immense massacres, it was the turn of the Greek Orthodox Christians, and within one year’s time a full 2.5 million wealthy Greeks were forced to leave for Greece, leaving their wealth and immovable property here in Anatolia. After all of this had been realized, the Turks, the Kurds, the Circassians—essentially all of the Muslim peoples of Anatolia, who had been broken and subjected over a decade of wars, and an entire generation of whose young men had been decimated in the First World War and the Turkish-Greek War. If the Armenians and Greeks had not been [ethnically] cleansed, the CUP[39] and its successor Turkish Republic would never have been able to impose a secular regime on these lands, because these two communities (millet) both possessed the traditions of communal worship demanded by their faiths, and in addition, they represented a potential three-way bloc due to both their [possession of immense] capital and their holding a sizeable and well-organized presence within the bureaucracy. It is interesting [to note] that, although they shared the same faith as the West, the latter never made a peep during either the Armenian massacres during the CUP era, nor the Greek expulsions during the Republican period; on the contrary, it gave [these governments] as much support as it was able. As we explained previously, this was all part of the plan to bring about the grand plan of permanently secularizing Istanbul, the location of the Caliphate, and the Turkish nation, the leader of the [world’s] Muslims. This project was deemed so crucial that the West not only did not openly object to the oppression of its coreligionists, but even lent its support [to the effort]. The greatest support for the massacre of the Armenians came from Germany, which admitted that these killings amounted to a ‘genocide’. As for the expulsion of the Greek population, the entire West lent its support, with the principal supporters being England, the United States, France and Russia.
Yet it was these same western countries who, during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, established a great many international tribunals to deal with the ‘Hamidiye Regiments’ that were established to prevent the Armenians from carrying out, with Russian support, any more massacres against the Muslim Kurds and Turks in the East. The most famous of these was the trial against the martyr Hacı Musa Bey, who during that period was the man most feared by the Armenians of the East, and who was tried in Istanbul and acquitted.
As part of its overall strategy of claiming an “Armenian Genocide”, the Armenian lobby is proceeding with great caution and deliberation, and omits any mention or discussion of the events in Eastern Anatolia. This is because they know full well that they were the ones who first pepetrated massacres in the East, and who were the main ones responsible for them. Nevertheless, the Armenian communities in the West show no interest in these massacres. And many of those who were truly innocent ultimately fell victim to a wholly Jewish-CUP massacre.
Indeed, the whole problem lies therein. The Armenian-Jewish conflict that is taking place on the international stage is being fought over the secular Republic of Turkey, which is a Dönme Republic. The Jews, who officially view the Dönmes as “the children of adulterous unions” (veled-i zina) (see: Ertuğrul Düzdağ, Yakın Tarihimizde Dönmelik ve Dönmeler), nevertheless see no harm in using these Dönmes, with whom they maintain close ties, in order to impose their policies on the world. The Dönmes, who in this sense see the Republic of Turkey as the first ‘Israel’ to have been created, have received a great deal of support from the Jews of Israel, who see as one of its central objectives the creation and maintenance in a certain fashion of the Republic of Turkey, which has been one of the principal factors in [the ensuring of] Israel’s survival. It must not be forgotten that those Jews who emigrated from Turkey (the founding Prime Minister Ben-Gurion) and the Dönmes were the ones who founded Israel by [waging] war and killing Muslim Arabs. And the Israeli Jews themselves say “We would prefer to lose [the support] of America to [that of] losing Turkey”, because they know that if Turkey is lost, they may well lose America, too. Turkey is one of the first three or four countries in the world to recognize Israel! The loss of Turkey will mean the reestablishment of the Caliphate and the demonstration that Islam is the TRUE BELIEF, and that theirs is falsehood and superstition. Indeed, Turkey does indeed hold such a vital importance for the Jews of Israel….
Another reaction to the ADL’s declaration would come from the radical Islamist Aylık journal too. The journal would comment this decision as follows: [40]
Every year during the “Genocide Day” campaigns the Jews in Armenia are subjected to attacks, because when the Armenians in Turkey were subjected to massacres after the [Committee of] Union and Progress came to power, the Jews played the leading role. This fact is well known all over the world except in Turkey.
For years, the lie of the Jews that only they have been the victims of “genocide” has been a policy that was devised and developed in order to strengthen their own political position in the world and to create international pressure. Although it has stung their consciences greatly, the Jews have been forced reluctanty to digets the initiatives that the Armenians have taken [to have their own genocide recognized]. But from now on it is going to be a very difficult process, both for the Jews and for their servants. (…)
As it will be understood, the Jew has been forced to leave Turkey to confront its own pains. But it seems that the prize that [Prime Minister] Tayyip [Erdoğan] received from the Jew wasn’t worth a damn thing.[41] At this point, as so many internal and external developments are coming one after the other, will Turkey be able to confront and emerge from the hopelessness that [ADL National Director Abe] Foxman was obliged to describe by consulting and cooperating with the Jew?
If not, will new clashes be triggered when the truths upon which the regime was founded unexpectedly come to light one after the other?
Our opinion is that the “guarantee certificate”, that the Turkish Republic obtained in Lausanne from the Jew who was the vanguard of imperialism, has now expired.
b. The Turkish-Armenian Journalists
Agos Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink
During an interview with Agos Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink the day following the appearance of the above-mentioned Karagül and Kamış pieces, the conspiracy-minded journalist Aydoğan Vatandaş[42] broached the subject of Jewish involvement in the Armenian Genocide. Below is an account of their conversation and Dink’s replies:
Question: There was an article by Mehmet Kamış in yesterday’s Zaman. İbrahim Karagül also published an article in Yeni Şafak. There is such a theory [stating that] a group known today as the Sabbateans was to a large extent in control of the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress. Another analysis has claimed that there was Jewish capital behind the [actions of] the German Army. What do you say [to these claims]?
Answer: It is not a new thesis. I also wrote on this matter a few times. You can also add to that the Baghdad Railway project. I could mention some things from Armenian sources or about the way that Armenians see the[ir] history, but there might be persons who will interpret our conversation as a kind of antisemitism. Let me say right here and now that that would be unfair. If you look to the account generally accepted by the Armenians you will indeed see that behind the Committee of Union and Progress there was German military power, and along side German military power there was the Jewish capital of Germany. This is a topic yet to be researched. If there are any documents or information [on this subject] it will [eventually] come out. In the end the German archives will be the most important testimony, and the Germans themselves have begun to question their own history. In the future we will have a much clearer view [of what happened]. I do not want to go too far into this Sabbateanism thing because, yes, in fact, there are views that claim that among the Committee of Union and Progress leaders that you listed there were indeed certain leaders, such as Dr. Nâzım, who were Dönmes.
I don’t wish to say that the Jews were the enemies of the Armenians. It’s true, such things can exist, [but] it doesn’t make any difference. Let me state that here. An Armenian could also have been a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (…) You know that there was the problem [of competition over influence] in the Palace between the Jews and the Armenians during the Ottoman period. The question of who would economically dominate the Palace was a crucial matter. Sometimes, it was the Jews who would dominate, at other times, the Sultan would grow angry at the Armenians and would decree that from that moment on Armenians would be prohibited from participating in tenders [for contracts]. It is a fact that such a competition existed between the Armenians and the Jews over who would dominate commerce.
The economists will discover [the truth about this matter]. Anyway, it is not my task to find out how this competition has or has not affected what happened [in 1915]. But, when speaking openly, the Armenians do say such things as that “it was in fact the Jews that had a hand behind what happened to us”.[43]
Although Dink attempted—unsuccessfully—to give the impression that his approach to the matter was objective and scholarly, his response ultimately implied that the Dönmes were indeed the real agents in the Armenian genocide. Not that we should be surprised by this, for five years previous Dink had expressed such a view much more clearly in a piece that he penned during the time when the much disputed U.S. House Resolution No. 398 calling for official American recognition of the historical reality of the Armenian genocide was being submitted to Congress, only to be ultimately withdrawn at the last minute as a result of the combined urgings of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the Quincentennial Foundation, various Jewish-American organizations, the State of Israel and even President Bill Clinton. In this article Dink openly expressed the disappointment and irritation that had been created within the Turkish Armenian community at the aforementioned Jewish organizations, the Israeli government and the Quincentennial Foundation for their consistent and successful effort to block successive ‘Armenian genocide resolutions’ every time they came before Congress. The Agos editor-in-chief then went on to indirectly hint that crypto-Jews played an important role in the 1915 Deportation:
The history of Armenian-Jewish relations is a subject to which I have always paid close attention. It’s likely that there were good times [in this relationship] and bad times, too. It certainly is an interesting area for those with an interest in history, and one that should be further studied.
Some historians have indirectly said that there might be a ‘Jewish hand’ behind the 1915 Armenian Genocide, as well as in a series of events that preceded it. It has been shown that there were a goodly number of Jewish descendants of Sabbatai Sevi among the leadership of the CUP, persons such as [Dr.] Nâzım Bey, and that they played an important role in the decision to [carry out] the deportation of 1915. There are even those who claim that ‘German-Jewish Capital’ was [the force] behind the German Militarism that manipulated the CUP during this period. The research on the subject is still inconclusive, but new claims are appearing daily. I don’t know if the Jews played an important role in [the events of] 1915, but it should be remembered that both the Jewish ‘palace’ merchants and the Armenian ‘Amira’ merchants were in competition for the Sultan’s favor, and the [two communities’] bazaar merchants were waging a momentous struggle to secure themselves contracts from the palace.
This struggle between the[se two sides] sometimes reached the level of attempting to ‘trip each other up’ in extremely brutal fashion. And it is so written in the history books that, in one period in which Jewish influence in the Palace was great, the Sultan Abdülhamid [II] issued an imperial decree stating that “from this time onward, Armenian merchants shall not be considered for state tenders”.
Anyway, let’s leave history to the historians and deal with the here and now.
It appears that the word “Jewish Lobbies” has been mentioned in some way or another in connection with almost every “Armenian Genocide [Resolution]”. The Jewish Lobbies have consistently opposed the “Armenian Genocide [Resolution]s for two separate reasons.
The first of these can be summed up thus: “The term Holocaust cannot be used for such a claim. Until now, the only people to have suffered a genocide are the Jews and the only genocide that has been recognized in international legal circles as meeting the definition of Holocaust is that perpetrated by the Germans against the Jews. All claims apart from this are attempts to cheapen the significance of this term”.
If we were to reduce this down to one sentence, it would be:
“Holocaust is a term that exclusively explains the genocide of the Jews, no one else has the right to use it”.
A cautious approach to Turkish-Israeli relations would appear to be the second reason, as this situation is better understood. And so certain circles can claim that, the Jewish lobbies’ stance of opposing the Armenian lobbies has played an important role matter of the good relations that have developed between Turkey and Israel.[44]
In response to Dink’s article, the Turkish-Jewish businessman and Quincentennial Foundation Chairman Jak Kamhi would react by writing a letter to the editorial board of Agos claiming that “the attribution of the responsibility for the bitter events of 1915 to Turkish-Jewish community, and on the basis of words that carry very different meanings from those into which they are forced, is, in my mind, an example of a fanaticism whose equal is rarely seen”.[45]
On August 16, 2007 Jak Kamhi was given the Turkish Medal for “Outstanding Service to the State” by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer at an official ceremony. After reporting on this event Agos added an “editor’s note” at the end of the article showing very clearly, that it continued to stand by the comments made by Hrant Dink in the year 2000:[46]
It is clearly understood that first and foremost among the services for which Jak Kamhi has earned the state’s outstanding service award are the extensive efforts that he has displayed in regard to the Armenian Question. It should be recalled that in his function as President of the Quincentennial Foundation and within the framework of the outstanding services that he performed against the Draft Resolution on the Armenian Genocide, Jak Kamhi sent a letter to the [U. S.] House of Representatives. In response Hrant Dink, the founder of our newspaper wrote and published in Agos on October 20, 2000 an article titled ‘The Real Farce’ (Gerçek Maskaralık), and that Jak Kamhi then responded by sending a refutation—not to the daily Zaman, which was the source of the original report, but to Agos. Those of our readers who wish to do so may access the aforementioned article via the Agos website and can then once more recollect how Hrant Dink explained and interpreted [Kamhi’s] “outstanding services”.
Another example of the anger generated within Turkey’s Armenian community intellectual intelligentsia by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s awarding of Jak Kamhi with the medal for “Outstanding Service for the State” appeared not in Agos this time, but in an article by Levon Panos Dabağyan, an Armenian popular historian and columnist published in the Turkish ultra-nationalist daily Önce Vatan:[47]
In truth, no serious enmity has ever been experienced in any period of Turkish-Armenian history and for centuries they lived together, intertwined with one another. And that’s exactly how they had continued to live until the appearance of those well-known [foreign] incitements and conspiracies.
The “Zionist-derived” and nourished The Party of Union and Progress as well as the arm of Zionism, Dashnaktsoutian and Hunchak Parties played the central role in the emergence of the aforementioned tragedy and the Turkish and Armenian peoples were made to pay the price for this!..
This is what they have wanted to keep secret from the Turks and Armenians, and how bitter it is that certain corrupt media and television outlets have even succeeded in hiding this horrible truth.(…)
The American “Jewish Lobby” will look you straight in the eyes and use the Armenians in the most reprehensible ways and even deceive you when necessary…. In this way some of the Jewish businessmen in Turkey are, by fanning the flames, working with all their might so that the question will become a full-blown problem!…
[Such a thing] has not been seen anywhere else in the world: That [a member of] one of the two minorities that live within a country as citizen be able to state openly and publicly that he is against the other minority and receive an award from the State?!.. This is the case in Turkey, and although the problem is our problem, since we are not trusted [with such a task] an individual who is a member of another minority is entrusted with said task. The most interesting aspect of this question is that they look upon this [minority] as heroes, even though they have been unable to solve any problem whatsoever!… (…)
The people who suppose that we can resolve the “Turkish-Armenian” question through [using] Jewish scholars, Jewish businessmen and those in the media and such, are doomed to err again and again, because “the mill doesn’t turn with carried water! (You can’t complete a task without the correct means to do so)”
The Jew, in order to preserve his position in the Middle East, wants always to see Turkey as his ally and he is absolutely right since the issue is his own “national existence”. But since he is thinking about his own benefit in the sense of his own national interests, it is not at all elegant to incorporate the Armenian sphere into his political plans!..
Agos Columnist Markar Esayan
In a piece reviewing Soner Yalçın’s highly successful book Efendi, the Agos columnist Markar Esayan calls “the book, something that has greatly drawn my interest, and deals with a subject over which I have myself conducted only very superficial research: the connections between the Sabbateans, [i.e.,] the ‘White Turks’, the Union and Progress Party, Ottoman history in the 19th century, the Armenians and, of course, the connection of all of these to the 1915 Deportation…”. Esayan then goes on to briefly explain the phenomenon of Sabbatai Sevi and the Dönmes, finally concluding by saying:
What sort of connection is there really between these persons, who controlled the sect of Sabbateanism and Islam, and occupied the highest positions in the [Ottoman] state, and who skillfully merged Jewish identity and Turkishness, with the ‘deep state’ of today and of yesterday? This is exactly the subject of Soner Yalçın’s book Efendi. Although its reliability and scientific character are open to debate, it is certain that this book had posed a number of unanswered questions. In particular, this subject is connected a lot to the elimination of the Janissary regiments, which had thoroughgoing economic ties with the Jews, during the reign of Mahmud II and the establishment of the Nizam-ı Cedid—which was supported by the Armenians and Greeks—in their place, the [burgeoning] relations with Europe that produced economic conditions that increasingly favored the Armenians and Greeks at the expense of the Jews, and soon thereafter, the overthrow of Abdülhamid II, plus the elimination of the Armenians after the Unionists came to power.[48]
Önce Vatan Columnist Levon Panos Dabağyan
One final example of the ‘Sabbatean conspiracy’ theorists within the Armenian community is again from an article of Levon Panos Dabağyan, published in the Turkish ultra-nationalist daily Önce Vatan. Dabağyan, who is well-known for his antisemitic[49] and staunchly pro-Turkish nationalist views, also touched on the subject of the Armenian genocide in one of his essays:
England, which was planning the partition and elimination of the Ottoman-Turkish Empire, naturally envisioned [by means of] this issue the establishment of direct control over the Middle East [in order] to obtain ownership and control of 100 per cent of the oil of the [region]. As for the Zionists, who possessed their own grand plan in this region during those years, and who relied upon the ability to establish the central goal of this plan (a reborn State of Israel), they never for one second forgot the Armenians who, despite being a minority population, were considered the most loyal subjects. Likewise, they were able to solve this problem—albeit only partially—during the years of the First World War. Because Czarist Russia, which was expanding, incited the Armenians of the Caucasus to action and they brought the Armenian Question to the agenda within Ottoman-Turkish lands and were thereby indirectly able to drive the Armenians of Ottoman Turkey into the midst of the inferno.
And afterward? What came afterward is well known: There were rebellions and suppressions [of rebellions] during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II. And after that there was the well known and unfortunate [Deportation affair], in which thousands of innocent Turks and Turkish Armenians fell victim. In other words, together with the Russians, the Armenians of the Caucasus attacked the Turkey of the Ottomans, and the Turkish Armenians paid the price [for this].[50]
Other Examples
It would be wrong to conclude, on the basis of the examples exhibited above that this type of theorizing is a phenomenon peculiar to Turkish Armenian journalists. This view has also been embraced both by certain fringe elements in Armenia itself as well as by some of the Armenians in the diaspora. For example, an Armenian in Iran taking part in an Armenian discussion group online expressed near identical views. He wrote:
I just wanted to share with you a certain conspiracy theory that is being widely recited amongst Armenian Persians and Persians both inside and outside of Iran. You may be able to help me to verify the truth or falseness of this claim concerning the Armenian Genocide.
As you may agree[,] in any major event there are instigators and perpetrators. The instigators being those who pull the strings behind the scenes and the perpetrators being those mercenaries who carry out their orders in exchange for some form of compensation.
It is being said that in the Armenian Genocide[,] although the perpetrators were indeed the Turks[,] the instigators were Jewish. This by no means is meant to diminish the horrible crimes committee by Turks and their brutality and cruelly.
The reason being cited is that the great majority of Jews living in Turkey had escaped the Spanish Inquisition in Spain and had taken refuge in Turkey around 500 years ago. The Jewish people were burnt at [the] stake and flayed alive and viciously persecuted by the advancing Catholic Armies. The Jewish community in Turkey had become prosperous as successful merchants and businessmen and were very influential in the Ottoman courts as advisors, treasurers and doctors. The Jewish people were looking for an opportune moment to take revenge on a Christian minority since they truly believe in an eye for an eye. So they used the chaos created by WWI in order to realize their plans.
The other reasons being cited is that the Jews are mad at Armenians since they partly blame them for the survival of Christianity[,] since the Armenians are believed to be amongst the first people who converted to Christianity en masse.
That is why to this day the jews are reluctant to allow any comparison between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust and it is also being rumored that they are blocking indirectly Armenian efforts to have the Armenian Genocide recognized[,] particularly in the US.[51]
In another online article discussing the situation of the Jews in Armenia, one can find frequent claims that the recent emergence of antisemitism in Armenia derives from the views mentioned above:
It appears that Anti-Semitism began in Armenia in the 1960s and 1970s. Some Soviet historians claimed that the Young Turks had been guided by the Zionists when planning out and implementing the Armenian Genocide. One thing that remains unclear is how Israel took advantage of the Armenian Genocide when founding the nation.
Many Armenian nationalists adopted this ridiculous theory. Those nationalist forces became more active during the past couple of years by spreading their Anti-Jew comments in the press. The most influential representative of the “Tribe Worshippers”[,] Armen Avetisyan[,] was the most talked about figure in the media throughout 2003-2004. In one of the interviews, Avetisyan threatened to exile all Jews from Armenia. Even [the] owner of the ALM television network[,] Tigran Karapetyan[,] enjoyed cursing the Jews.[52]
And yet another testimony worth noting—despite its bad grammar–is the following declaration that appeared in another Internet discussion site:
The anti-Semitism, or to be more concrete, the antagonism felt toward Jews by some Armenian circles is very closely connected to the Turkish-Armenian past. I have many times witnessed people starting talking or condemning Israeli politics and reaching to a point at the end of the discussion where they accuse all Jews ruling the world anyway. (Not to be able to distinguish between criticizing a country for its politics and condemning a whole group of people being responsible for world suffering—that is, in Jewish context, anti-Semitism. Where hostility toward Jews among some Armenians is very much connected to the issue we discuss here, is when discussions (mostly in private circles) on Armenian Genocide reach a point where people decide to agree upon not the Turks or the Ottomans, but the Jews being the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide (because of claims regarding Talat, Enver, etc. being Jews, or Dönme, or Sabetayist, etc.)
Let me stress here that, yes, these discussions take place among private circles, and, yes, I base my claims on anti-Semitic mind-set among some Armenian circles to my private observations. Please note my wording “SOME Armenian circles.” I refrain from most generalizations. It is therefore that I will never be able and never want to claim anti-Semitism being prevalent among ALL Armenians. Coming to the issue of the validity of private observations: I believe of these incidents—as they occurred to me more than once—to be pretty representative. Another reason why I rely on my “private” observations is because they involve “public” figures in both Turkish and Armenian communities.[53]
One final example is the following statement, which was made by the Armenian citizen Arshak Sarkisyan and recorded by Milliyet writer Ece Temelkuran in a series of articles that she wrote reporting his impressions of her visit to Armenia:
Talat Pasha was a Jew. They [i.e., the Young Turks] created the bad blood between the Turks and Armenians. The Turks didn’t carry out the genocide. But all of the Young Turks were Jews.[54]
In a similar vein, on April 24, 2003, at a commemoration of the 88th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the extreme rightist Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaksoutian) burned a Turkish flag in which the traditional five-pointed Turkish star had been replaced by a six-pointed Star of David, no doubt intending to send the message by this action that the Republic of Turkey was controlled by the Jews.[55]
c. Ilgaz Zorlu
Another figure who has expressed views similar to those espoused by Hrant Dink and the Armenian nationalists is Ilgaz Zorlu, the Turkish citizen who created a sensation when he came forth in the late 1990s with the claim that he was of Sabbatean origin. As a result of his claim of being an ‘insider’ to the whole Dönme phenomenon, Zorlu was quickly embraced by the Turkish media as an authority on the subject. In a 2001 interview, he gave his own, largely corroborating version of the Armenian nationalists’ thesis:
I believe that there has been a serious Armenian-Sabbatean dispute in regard to this Armenian question. The greatest error of all derives from this [dispute]. [It’s in] the German archives of that period in which the [documentation regarding] the [Berlin-to-]Baghdad Railway is located, because Germany was very powerful during that period. I think that the German archives were destroyed during the Second World War. There’s the same problem in the Russian archives, as well as in the Ottoman Archives. In any case, at this time it isn’t possible for all of the documentation to be opened [to the public], because we’re talking about millions of documents. In such a situation, it seems to me that it’s just a lot of empty chatter. What needs to be done is for researchers and historians to come together and study these things. The Armenian question is a serious problem. The question of the [Committee of] Union and Progress is even more serious. I believe that when the Union and Progress is resolved, a lot of [other] things in Turkey will be resolved as well.[56]
Zorlu would repeat these same views—wildly conjectural as they were–in various online discussion groups. On the “Türkistan Newsletter” discussion group site, for example, he asserted that a secret agreement had been made between the Unionist leaders Dr. Nâzım and Finance Minister Mehmet Cavit, both of whom were of Sabbatean origin, and that “those who look [into this matter] know that these individuals [we]re the active agents in the [Committee of] Union and Progress and especially, by means of the anti-Armenian group that they established, in the transforming of the [Armenian] deportation into a genocide”.[57] In the “Tarih ve Demokrasi Forumu” (History and Democracy Forum) discussion group he wrote “this much is definite: the expulsion of the Greeks and Armenians from Anatolia is a Jewish-Sabbatean idea”.[58] In a subsequent posting to a different discussion group, Zorlu would add the following: “Very bitter things occurred during the course of the Armenian incidents (please note: I said ‘incidents’; I’m consciously not using [the words] massacre and genocide), [and] it’s a shame that the Sabbateans were active in this, but it’s difficult to write about these matters without documentation[.] I have made a point of not writing about certain things that I have discovered, but I relayed them to a great many persons, including Yalçın [Küçük] Hoca’.[59]
d. Yalçın Küçük
Yalçın Küçük is a Marxist professor of economics who in the past decade has increasingly turned his attention to the question of the Sabbateans and Sabbatean-Jewish influence in/control of Turkey. In particular, as a piece with his conviction that the Turkish political, cultural, economic and social elite is nearly entirely composed of crypto-Jewish Sabbateans (and has been since its inception), he has become an ardent proponent of the use of ‘Onomastie’, also called the science of name origins, as a method of ‘determining’ the Hebrew equivalents of Turkish surnames, and thereby unmasking such persons. In light of this worldview, it is perhaps not surprising that in nearly every statement that he has made on the subject, Professor Küçük has characterized the 1915 Armenian Deportation as the result of a “Jewish-Armenian war”. In similar fashion, the anti-Greek riots of September 6-7, 1955, in which crowds in Istanbul descended upon, burnt and looted Greek-owned businesses, homes, cemeteries and churches, as the product of a “Jewish-Orthodox war”. Consider the following statements:
The [events of] “September 6-7 [1955]” [occurred] within [the framework of] the “Jewish-Christian Wars”. The 1915 Armenian massacre was also [one link] in the chain of these wars. We can show these things [to be true]. Thanks to heavens, Yerevan also sees things this way, and holds the Hebrews and the Sabbateans more responsible than the Turks.[60]
For the past hundred years there has been [a series of] Jewish-Christian Wars on these lands. Whether overtly or covertly, the Christian communities have been driven out by the Jewish elements. Want examples?: a) the 1915 Deportation was the Jewish expulsion of the Armenians, we call this the “Jewish-Armenian Wars”; b) the events of September 6-7, 1955 was the expulsion and massacre of the Hellenes, or, more correctly, the Orthodox [Christians]. There were no involvement of Turks in either of these two [events], [or if] there were, they were [merely] figure[heads]….Sometimes we are belligerents, and sometimes we are [merely] figure[heads].[61]
The Armenians hold the Crypto-Jews responsible for those things that came upon them. We can see traces of this in the ‘ASALA’ plots (those members of the Foreign Ministry of the Turkish Republic who fell victim to these plots were [all] Sabbateans). My works do not contradict this view. Among the most active [actors] in this field was Dr. Nâzım. Tevfik Rüştü Aras was another. We know that they were ‘brothers-in-law’. While one of them was hanged, the other was a [government] minister. The son-in-law of the minister—the one who wasn’t hanged—was later hanged himself. I think that they were [members of the Sabbatean subsect of the Karakaş. There is no difference between Allawi, Saakashvili, [Azerbaijan President] Aliyev’s son and İrecep İrdoğan, they were all placed [in their positions] by Washington. In fact, there is a difference between the first two and the latter two, one that favors the former. They were put in place by means of an occupation or a coup. Washington didn’t feel the need to [carry out] a coup when putting Aliyev and İrdoğan in place. There was no genocide [against] the Armenians. The Armenians themselves speak of the “great massacre”. Th[ese actions] that the former and ‘set-in-place’ Minister carried out need to be confessed to and forgiveness requested. When Kemal Derviş asks for forgiveness, he is asking for forgiveness on behalf of his Sabbatean ancestors.[62]
In a reference to a recent article by the Russian-Israeli writer Israel Shamir,[63] Küçük made the following declaration:
In a new piece Israel Shamir writes the following [about the Sabbateans]: “This peculiar sect played an important role in the tragic development in Turkey in the early 20th century; some Turkish historians connect them with the genocidal expulsion of Armenians, massacres of Greeks in Anatolia…” What [he’s] writing about [is that] some Turkish historians have attributed the expulsion of the Armenians and Greeks from these lands to the sabbateans; that means that our debates are already being heard everywhere [outside of Turkey as well].[64]
e. The Murder of Hrant Dink and the Conspiracy Theories Surrounding it
On October 19, 2007, Agos Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink was gunned down in front of his offices by a young Turkish nationalist incensed by what he had been led to believe was Dink’s insulting and disrespectful statements toward Turkey. News of Dink’s murder created a great stir in the Turkish press. Not surprisingly, in attempting to answer the question of “Who killed Hrant Dink—and why?”, the Islamist press wasted no time in turning out antisemitic conspiracy theories for the killing of this meteoric Turkish-Armenian journalist.
Aydoğan Vatandaş
In a piece that appeared the day after the assassination, Aydoğan Vatandaş (see section b. above) recalled the interview that he had had with Dink a year earlier in which the latter had not-so-indirectly hinted that the Dönmes and Jews were the main architects of the Armenian genocide. Using this as his starting point, Vatandaş then went on to imply on a vaguely worded piece that these same groups may have also planned Dink’s murder:
I got to know him in the month of May, in the year 2005, at the time that I was doing interviews for my book ASALA Operasyonları, published by Alfa Yayınları, and in which I attempted to understand the Armenian Question and the ASALA Murders.
During this interview [with him] Dink made several claims that no one in Turkey had yet had the courage to discuss, and he mentioned entirely different factors in the things that had happened to the Armenians.
Regarding the events that came upon the Armenians Dink drew attention to various countries apart from the Ottoman [Empire], to the composition of the [large] capital accumulations behind them and to a powerful ethnic community within the [Committee of] Union and Progress.
Dink was inclined to view the whole deportation affair in connection to ‘imperialism’.
When one looks at the timing of the murder, it [appears to be a] situation of killing two birds with one stone.
As is well known, the Armenian question will soon be taken up by the American Senate.
In a lead piece from last week, Eyüp Can, the Editor-in-Chief of the daily Referans, recounted at a dinner that he had attended with representatives of the Jewish Lobby in America and that these Jewish Lobby representatives had said that they wouldn’t be able to rescue Turkey this time.[65]
The truth of the matter is that, with this murder, Turkey has both lost its ability to maneuver abroad in regard to the Armenian question and has also had Hrant Dink silenced, the person who in recent years has been blaming the ‘Dominant’ powers [of complicity] in the Armenian question.
There will no doubt appear those who will interpret this murder as connected with the [current issue of] the President[ial election] process. But the timing of the Dink murder appears to me to be but one of the many assaults meant to weaken Turkey’s hand in regard to its international activity concerning the Armenian question.
The task [of discovering the truth] now falls to MİT [Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization] Under Secretary Emre Taner.
An important opportunity has now presented itself to Taner, who has previously called for MİT to develop a more proactive vision, to go on the offensive and not to merely react to developments [as they occur].
Like to solve th[is] murder, as well as to expose the international connections [behind it].
Let’s recall the words of the MİT Advisor while they are still fresh: in carrying out of such a plot, there absolutely must be [some] leads that point toward MİT itself.
Maybe the message to MİT is: “Go ahead, try and be as proactive as you can, we are still going to carry out such murders in broad daylight, right under your noses!”
“To foresee the future is to create it anew”.[66]
Bugün columnist Nuh Gönültaş
Vatandaş’s interview with Dink, published in the book Asala Operasyonları was then taken up by Bugün writer Nuh Gönültaş, who, after quoting Vatandaş’s account of Dink’s claims of Dönme responsibility for the Armenian genocide, concluded:
This book by Aydoğan Vatandaş is a really satisfying work. His interview with Hrant Dink really reveals what party or parties are really behind those who attacked him for his agenda![67]
The website Kürşad Harekâtı
Another contributor to the ‘Dönme conspiracy’ theory of Dink’s murder was the web entity known as Kürşad Harekâtı,[68] which has also asserted that Turkey’s current Chief-of-Staff, Army Commander Yaşar Büyükanıt comes from Dönme origins. The following article appeared on the organization’s website:
The murder of Hrant Dink was planned by masonic cells with ties to the Treason Organization, which is under the control of the secret sabbatean minority. The sabbateans who, by camouflaging themselves have gained control of a number of civilian and military offices, and the masons who are under their control are deceiving us with even simpler and conjectural threats so as to cloak themselves and cause [others] to forget [about their presence].
Ever since the end of the 19th century, when these circles succeeded in infiltrating the [Committee of] Union and Progress, they have directed all of the attention of our nation and its leaders toward the “Greek” and “Armenian” minorities, while hiding their own Jewishness by passing themselves off as Turks and Muslims. These sabbateans, who are in fact secret Jews, are more dangerous—incomparably more—than our Greek and Armenian fellow citizens, whose ethnic origins and religion we know and toward whom we clarified our legal relationship through the Lausanne Treaty.
The crypto-Jewish sabbateans have constantly fanned the flames of others’ ethnic and religious differences in order to disguise their own identities and cause it to be forgotten, to keep it off the agenda, to infiltrate into our ranks and [use it for] a field of activity. Behind the various tensions that are stirred up in our country at regular intervals, whether Turkish-Kurdish, secular-religious, Turkish-Armenian, Turkish-Greek or alevi-sunni tensions, are the filthy hands of the Treason Organization. These agents of treachery today work to foist upon our country’s most important institutions some of the intrigues that they have spun in the past.
Most recently, they have not only managed to have all reports of the formation of sabbatean cadres dropped from the headlines through the murder of Hrant Dink, which they carried out by means of nationalist terrorists, but also to ignite the first sparks of a new period of internal disorder, to incite against the [Turkish] nationalist [camp] so as to discredit them and leave them under a cloud of suspicion. What’s more, we will now be forced to depend on the support of the Jewish lobbies in order to be rescued from the pressures [exerted] by the Armenian diaspora; we will consent to the Greater Middle East Project[69] operations that the U.S. and Israel will carry out, and our ability to act against the illegal kurdo-judaic organizations will be steadily reduced so as not to be accused of being perpetrators of genocide, and on this pretext our present legal arrangements that punish insults to our Turkishness will be done away with, the position of the crypto-Jews and other minorities will be strengthened so that our nation will be declared guilty, and the economic fields that will be emptied of Armenians, who will be forced to leave our country, will quickly be filled by sabbateans, and so on, and so on….
Baran writer Hakkı Açıkalın
Another voice reiterating claims of a vast ‘Sabbatean conspiracy’ was Dr. Hakkı Açıkalın, a writer for the radical Islamist journal Baran.[70] In a recently published article, Açıkalın identifies the Jews and Dönmes as being behind the Armenian genocide:
The massacre and forcible deportation of the Armenians was carried out in April 1915 and beyond. The [Committee of] Union and Progress was the reason that this black mark has been credited to the people of Anatolia. Ziya Gökalp has defended this massacre with the following words:
‘[But] do not sully the name of our nation [on this account]. There has never been anything in Turkey like a wholesale slaughter of Armenians. There is a Turkish-Armenian dispute. They stabbed us in the back. And we struck [back]…’[71] How bitter it is that this person, who is considered the father of Turkish Nationalism, was a Kurdish Jew. That which has been characterized as the ‘Turkish-Armenian dispute’ was actually a ‘Jewish-Christian’ dispute, and this Jew inciting the Muslim Turks and Muslim Kurds against the Christian Armenian population, who were known as ‘the loyal nation’, threw them into the inferno with the aim of protecting Jewish interests. For 90 years the Turkish and Kurdish people have been [living] under torment of this accusation. But for their part, the Jews have come out smelling clean.
In a great many families in Turkey there are old women of Armenian origin. They always hid their Armenian origins out of fear. The Armenians experienced an enormous social and political trauma [as a result of] the deportation and massacres. Besides the Armenians, who were subjected to massacres, the Kurds, who inhabit the same geography [as the Armenians], have been equally affected by the trauma that they experienced as a result of their own participation in these events.
Why should the Turks and Kurds be the partners of this generation of Talat, Enver and Cemal Pashas, of Dr. Bahaettin Şakirs, Dr. Nâzıms and Ziya Gökalps in Turkey (AND I’LL SAY IT AGAIN; THEY ARE ALL SABBATEAN DÖNMES, THEY ARE JEWS!), on account of what they did to the Armenians?[*]
The Sabbateans attempted not to make themselves noticed within the other communities of the Balkans. If [these] other communities sensed that the Sabbateans were different in any way, they didn’t do a thing about it. The majority of persons in the[se] other communities were very poor. Power and money were in the hands of the Sabbateans. The visible behavior and other characteristics peculiar to the Sabbateans appeared to [those of] other nations simply as behaviors that derived from their material wealth. But it was not so. One the contrary. The Sabbateans were culturally very different and they grew rich from acting in partnership with the Jews, and because, in fact, they were Jews.
There were Sabbateans who attained command and high rank within the army. Because the army was, in the eyes of the people, the savior [of the nation], they submitted to the dictates of its high officers without knowing what was being done or what it’s objectives were. Upon the orders of the [Committee of] Union and Progress, most of the Armenians were either killed in their villages or, while being driven in utter misery and deprivation to Lebanon and Syria, died on the journey.
The Armenians all know that those who killed their ancestors were the Young Turks/Union and Progress—in other words, the Jews (Musevi) and Sabbateans, who descended from the Jewish (Yahudi) race. The killers may have been Turkish on the outside, but on the inside they were in fact Jewish.
Although the Sabbateans all possess Turkish names and cloak themselves in a Muslim identity, they [i.e., the Armenians] are able to make this differentiation because in the Ottoman Empire for centuries there was no interaction between them and the Muslim Turks. They all know very well with whom they interacted and they were not deceived in the least. Since the appearance of Sabbateanism the Armenians even wrote books about them. In this sense in a memorial commemorating the Genocide that was opened last year in France, they even inscribed upon this monument that it was not the Turks but the Union and Progress or Young Turks (in other words, the Sabbateans and Jews) who carried out this genocide.
Have you ever noticed that the ASALA has never killed a single Turk who descends from [true] Muslim roots? It is said that without exception only Sabbateans are accepted into the Foreign Ministry. Everybody knows this. Turkish youth who are of Muslim origin are not accepted into the Foreign Ministry so that they won’t notice the presence of Sabbateans, won’t discern their games, and [therefore] won’t tell others outside the ministry. Now think for a minute: why has the ASALA up to now only attacked [Turkish] diplomats and other Foreign Ministry employees? The reason is simple: it is because they know that those who work in the Foreign Ministry are the descendents of those who ordered and are responsible for the genocide of their ancestors. There is no need for either the Turkish nation nor Muslims in general to get up in arms. Those who are being liquidated are neither Muslims, nor Turks, nor Kurds, nor Circassians, nor Arabs.
In that case, why should it concern us if a [C]UP gang is punished by the Armenian people or its organizations? Aren’t they the ones who have conspired against our very lives? In that case, why should we hold a ‘requiem’ after the sabbateans [who were murdered], why should we feel sorrow? For those who spill the blood of Palestine, those who are responsible [for what’s happening] in Iraq, those who set the entire world against itself, why should we entertain this illusion that they have been ‘persecuted’? The Armenian people is much closer to us than the curse of the Jews and we’ve never received any injury from them. The Armenians have never done any damage to Islâm. Whereas the history of the Jews is the history of destruction and loss.[72]
Another insinuation that the perpetrators of Hrant Dink’s murder were Sabbatean was to be found in the pro-İBDA-C journal Aylık. Enes Duman, one of the journal’s writers, explained the assailants’ reason for killing Dink thus:[73]
Those utterances directed at Dink to the effect of “That’s enough out of you!” were not simply empty threats, because Hrant Dink had become quite frightening to those gentlemen, in regard to his identification of the source of the filth [in this country]; he held the Union and Progress, its successors (whoever was left) the United States and Germany responsible for the Armenian massacres, and, most important, in recent times he had identified [the entire affair] as a Sabbatean operation.
El Aziz Newspaper’s columnist Vahit Şekerci
Another article suggesting that Hrant Dink was murdered by a “Sabbatean plot” was published in El Aziz, a local newspaper of Elazığ known for its pro-Erbakan and pro-Felicity Party (SP) views:[74]
The deep, underlying powers that lay the utmost importance on taking measures to hide their [true] identities and goals are quite merciless toward those who expose them and reveal their true identities. They cannot stand those who shine the harsh light on the either their existence or activities and bring them before the public’s attention, who never tire of enlightening and educating society. And as for a person who has the status of an opinion leader who has influence over a given society, someone such as Hrant Dink, who is the subject of our discussion…
Hrant Dink made the following statement—a statement not only terrifying but also dangerous—so dangerous in fact as to cost him his life:
As a person who knows and is intimately familiar with the Diaspora, the truth as I see it, is that the Diaspora definitely doesn’t possess the power to allow them to continue the influential international campaigns concerning the claims of an Armenian genocide, or to have various laws and resolutions passed in various countries’ parliaments. How can anyone imagine that they could have such decisions passed in the parliaments of countries like Germany, where the Armenian population is so small as to be practically non-existent? Let me also add this fact: the claims of an Armenian genocide have until now not produced any benefit whatsoever for either the Armenians or for Armenia.
These words show that Hrant Dink had correctly discerned the power of the American Jewish Lobby and international Zionist organizations and had clearly and precisely stated that, by constantly keeping these claims of an Armenian genocide on the world’s agenda, these powers had devised policies that served the Jews more than the Armenians.
Here at El-Aziz we have consistently explained that ever since the final years of the Ottoman [Empire] the Armenian and Greek danger was artificially inflated by sowing the seeds of enmity, hatred and hostility between them and the Muslim society, and that behind this [effort one can find concealed] the awesome power of the Sabbatean community. [The modern country of] Turkey was established on such policies.
It is as a result of these systematic, persistent and deeply-rooted policies that the Greeks—and especially the Armenians, who had traditionally been referred to affectionately as the ‘faithful community’ (tebaa-i sadıka)–became the most hated minorit[y communitie]s within Turkey and were completely extirpated, despite the fact that they were those communities with the deepest roots in the Ottoman State. In contrast, the Jews were raised up and exalted, and brought to a position of domination over the overwhelmingly Muslim majority in every area [of society].
Those who carried out the Deportation of Armenians (Tehcir) were the leaders of the Committee (Party) of Union and Progress, who acquired control of the Ottoman state through a number of political conspiracies, revolts and coups d’etat. Talât Pasha, who as Grand Vizier planned and brought to fruition the Deportation affair, would pay for this deed with his life in Germany, his place of exile [after the war], when he was struck in the back by the bullets of an Armenian militant. He was both a Sabbatean and a Freemason.
Those states under the control of International Zionism, who established and ran the Armenian Hunchak and Dashnak organizations and who, by [holding out] the promise of an independent state [of their own], incited them to undertake bloody actions and thereby betray the Ottoman [Empire] by striking it from behind, were not satisfied merely to watch the calamity of the [D]eportation, but instead even provided various [means of] support.
These same states [under the control of International Zionism] remained also passive observers when the oligarchy [in charge of the] Sabbatean community, which generally relies on Zionism, forced those Armenians remaining [in Turkey] after the Deportation and those Greeks remaining after the [1923] Population Exchange to emigrate as a result of an incomprehensible action like the Capital Tax, which was carried out before the gaze of the modern world, and the looting and pillaging that were systematically carried out on September 6-7 [1955] with the knowledge of the state forces. Since the Sabbatean community oligarchy has been dispersed in Turkey the Zionist powers are now continuing to keep the claims of an Armenian genocide on the [world] agenda by showing as an argument the political conspiracies and murders that they have themselves arranged with the aim of again bringing Turkey to the state of that they will monopolize all power within the country. In short, the very political crimes and murders that were carried out a century before are now used as a justification for shielding [their responsibility for] new ones.
And so it is that elements connected to the American Jewish lobby are on one hand annually receiving hefty amounts of cash from Turkey for the purpose of preventing [the passage of] Armenian genocide bills, while on the other hand they are the ones preparing these bills and submitting them to the U.S. Congress. And of course they cover the deceitful games that they are playing with the cloak of the Armenian diaspora.
Without any doubt, the Armenian diaspora has neither the strength or the intelligence for such grand matters. And Hrant Dink, the Editor-in-Chief of the Agos newspaper, was targeted because he saw this reality and tried to show it to the community to which he belonged. Apart from International Zionism and its branch in Turkey (the members of the Sabbatean community), who else would be angered by Hrant Dink’s [above quoted] statement, and his dissemination of his views and opinions regarding this statement?
Just as International Zionism has worked to instill hostility toward Turkey among the Armenian diaspora and its puppet the government of Armenia, the actions of the Sabbatean Community has here employed certain allegedly ultra-nationalist elements in the attacks that it has carried out against the Armenian community.
The members of this crypto-Jewish community, which places extraordinary importance on disguising its true identity, have established themselves in almost every sector and particularly within the nationalist organizations. It is for this reason that the greatest nationalist ideologues of our recent history have almost all been members of this crypto-Jewish community.
It is no coincidence that the trigger men in political murders are generally identified and chosen from within the militant nationalist groups. The Jews’ tactic of divide and conquer, which is their oldest method, can still be implemented within societies that are divided and weakened by micro-nationalism. Judaism itself, which, in a word, is a racist religion, is [responsible for] organizing all of the racist movements on the face of the earth.
The fact that the views and opinions expressed by Hrant Dink were likely to throw a wrench in the gears of Zionist plots, and the nationalist tendencies of the trigger men that are used in these conspiracies both clearly point to the real actors [in these events]. I think that that it goes without saying that ‘tidy’ (!) operations like these were cooked up in the MOSSAD kitchen and served up [in Turkey].
Conclusion
There are two principal reasons for the spread of the notion that the Dönmes are the true architects of the Armenian genocide, now so frequently encountered in Armenian popular culture.
The first of these is the fact that the State of Israel, the various Jewish-American organizations, the Quincentennial Foundation and even the Chief Rabbinate of Turkey have adopted such a harsh, rejectionist stance toward the idea that the events of 1915 constitute a genocide and reject any comparisons with the Holocaust.
The second—and partially stemming from the first—is the ongoing (and heretofore, largely successful) struggle that these groups have waged on Turkey’s behalf to block the more than 30-year attempt by Armenian-American organizations to receive official governmental recognition of these events as a genocide. This behavior is largely seen by the Armenian community as an unwillingness by the Jewish people to compromise the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and of their own historical experience by ‘sharing’ the status of ‘genocidal victimhood’ with others. One of the principal ways in which the resentment that such behavior has elicited among the mass of Armenians has manifested within their popular culture is the development and spread of the idea that the Jews were behind their own genocide. In this attempt, the presence—real or imagined—of persons originating crypto-Jewish Sabbatean sect plays a crucial role, since it allows one to claim that ‘things are not what they seem’ and therefore to overcome the fact that the actual Jewish population of the Ottoman Empire, (and certainly in the government and coercive branches) was too negligible to actually be charged with such a task. Not so the Dönmes, who by their very secretive nature and unconfessed identities can thus be ‘discovered’ everywhere. Who is a Dönme? Whoever you want, or, more seriously put, anyone who, by their identification as such, further reinforces one’s conspiracy theory.
And if these variations on the theme of Dönme responsibility for the Armenian genocide find a psychic and emotional resonance among Armenians as a sort of ‘moral payback’ for the Jewish rejection of their Holocaust, how much more satisfying must such an explanation of the Armenian tragedy be for Turkey’s Muslim population? Turkish popular culture has long has its own widespread theory of a Jewish-Zionist-Dönme-Masonic cabal (varying combinations and explanations exist) having toppled Sultan Abdülhamid II and having created and/or dominated the Committee of Union and Progress. This theory has long been current among a large part of Turkey’s conservative Islamic population, as it works to blame someone else both for the Ottomans’ military debacles during the final decades of its existence as well as for the creation of the secular, Western-oriented (and therefore much-despised) Turkish Republic. Upon the bedrock of this already widespread belief, the exculpating theory that it wasn’t real Turks, (or, alternately, real Kurds or real Muslims) but rather a ‘foreign’, Jewish cabal who planned and carried out the deportation and massacre of Armenians must be an immensely satisfying notion for a nation that has labored for decades under what it considers unjust accusations, and which has yet to fully confront its own troubled history. Moreover, in light of the recent sad history of Turkish-Armenian relations, one that is characterized by the hopeless cycle of harsh accusations, categorical denials, intolerable burdens of guilt, and a complete lack of closure regarding the events of 1915, against such a background, the projection of all blame onto a third party, one against which both sides already have their prejudices, seems to offer a psychic path out of this impasse. And it is in this role that the Dönmes fit so perfectly: an entity immeasurable and unknown, and thus, eminently malleable to the conspiratorial mindset; an empty vessel of indeterminate volume, one which can be filled with one’s fears, resentments, guilt and other psychological needs. Within the Turkish context, the Dönmes have indeed become the perfect scapegoat.
[1] www.jewishracism.com/Jewish_genocide_Enlarged.pdf
[2] Nilgün Gülcan, “Strange Armenian Claim: ‘Atatürk was Jewish and Zionists were Behind Armenian Genocide’”, Journal of Turkish Weekly, February 18, 2008, www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=52530
[3] Khatchig Mouradian, “The Stubborn Myth of Jewish Involvement in the Armenian Genocide”, http://www.jewcy.com/print/11768, February 11, 2008.
[4] On January 19, 2007 Dink was assassinated outside his office by a 19 year old Turkish nationalist who had traveled to Istanbul from his hometown of Trabzon in northeastern Turkey. This article was completed before Dink’s murder. For a narrative of the murder see Timur Soykan, Demet Bilge Ergün, Sapan, (İstanbul: Güncel Yayınları), 2007.
[5] Because the paper is the only Armenian newspaper published exclusively in Turkish it has received a certain amount of esteem and a ‘semi-official’ status from the Turkish elites as the mouthpiece of the country’s Armenian community.
[6] See the book’s Foreword for more on Zorlu and his place in the Dönme debate.
[7] The correct title of Küçük’s work is actually Dönmelik ve Dönmeler Tarihi (1st printing 1979).
[8] Dilipak is referring to the Turkish translation of Abraham Galante’s work Nouveaux Documents Sur Sabbatai Sevi Organisation et Us et Coutumes et ses Adeptes.
[9] Abdurrahman Dilipak, “Sabetaycılık ya da soykırım iddiaları üzerine”, Akit, September 25, 2000.
[10] Abdurrahman Dilipak, “Soykırım meselesi”, Anadolu’da Vakit, October 11, 2006. Anadolu’da Vakit is the more recent name of daily Akit.
[11] Abdurrahman Dilipak, “Derin Gerçek”, Anadolu’da Vakit, October 12, 2007.
[12] The paper has since its inception been an enthusiastic proponent—and, as a result, the semi-official mouthpiece—of the ‘National View’ (Millî Görüş) ideology espoused by Necmettin Erbakan, the doyen of political Islam in Turkey.
[13] Mehmed Şevket Eygi, “Agresif Misyonerler, Müslümanlar, Ermeniler”, Millî Gazete, December 29, 2005.
[14] The term the author uses for Jews is Musevi (literally, ‘Mosaic types’). In modern Turkish both this term and Yahudi are used interchangeably for ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’, but since the author uses the term Yahudilik for Judaism, the term Musevî is apparently used—albeit mistakenly–to show that Jews are but one of several branches of what he or she conceives of as ‘Judaism’.
[15] Eser Karakaş is a professor of economics and Vice Rector of Bahçeşehir University.
[16] The “student” being referred here is Suna Vidinli. Her name became popular on January 25, 2001 during the TV debate screened on the Show TV channel where a French parliamanterian participated. She was one of spectators following the debate and became famous when she interfered and told the French parliamanterian that he was wrong when he defined the mass killing of the Ottoman Armenians as a genocide. Hürriyet reported that “she teached a lesson to French parlamentarian François Rochebloine”. See Ayda Kayar, “Suna Pantagos’a da haddini bildirmişti”, Hürriyet, January 27, 2001. She was until April 2007 the Foreign Relations Coordinator of Doğan Media Group, afterwards she worked for the Ciner Media Group. She was the DP candidate for parliament from Samsun in the July 22, 2007 general elections but was not elected.
[17] “Gizli bir savaş: Yahudiler Ermenilere karşı”, http://mitglied.lycos.de/goezelel53/Ermeniler/body_ermeniler.htm. The same article can also be found at: http://www.angelfire.com/wy/yaw.moved-to-lid-hash/Ermeniler/ermeniler.html. Since writing this article these links no more exist. However this text has been published in a Turkish Turanist forum See: http://turkcuturancilar.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2918&PN=19
[18] Mehmet Kamış, “Suçlu Talat Paşa”, Zaman, May 4, 2005.
[19] Joseph Brewda, “Palmerston launches Young Turks to permanently control Middle East”, http://www.schillerinstitute.org/conf-iclc/1990s/conf_feb_1994_brewda.html.
[20] Clifford Shack, “The Armenian & Jewish Genocide Project: Eliminating Ethnic Conflict Along the Oil Route From Baku to the Suez Canal Region”, http://www.geocities.com/cliff_shack/RothschildianGenocide.html.
[21] Jack Manuelian, “The Planned, Organized and Executed Genocide of the Armenians”, March 27, 2005, http://www.panarmenian.net/library/eng/?part=2&id=59.
[22] İbrahim Karagül, “Ermeni tehciri, Selanik ‘dönmeleri’ Bakü petrolü ve Rothschild ailesi…”, Yeni Şafak, May 6, 2005. Karagül would repeat these claims in another piece the following year, “Soykırım ve paylaşımı: Ermeniler kimin umurunda!”, Yeni Şafak, October 20, 2006.
[23] “Ermeni tehciri ve Selanik dönmeleri”, Millî Gazete, May 7, 2005.
[24] Engin Ardıç refers here to Prof. Yalçın Küçük.
[25] Engin Ardıç, “Başbakan’ın kedisi”, Akşam, May 7, 2005.
[26] Gönültaş (1966- ) began his journalistic career with the Islamist daily Zaman, eventually moving to Dünden Bugüne Tercüman. The latter paper has since changed its name to Bugün.
[27] Professor [emeritus] Vahakn N. Dadrian was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Association of Genocide Scholars during its Sixth Biennial Conference on June 4-7, 2005. See Roger W. Smith’s “Brief Biography of Vahakn N. Dadrian”, www.zoryaninstitute.org/Table_Of_Contents/genocide_bio_dadrian.htm. As can be readily seen, Gönültaş’s account is flawed, both in its dates and in his representation of the gathering as ‘The International Jewish Holocaust Conference’.
[28] Gönültaş is referring to Yossi Sarid’s statement made in April 2000. See: Gil Hoffman, “Armenian Genocide to be taught”, The Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2000.
[29] Gönültaş’s footnote: Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), 1990.
[30] Nuh Gönültaş, “Bediüzzaman ve Ermeniler”, Dünden Bugüne Tercüman, April 9, 2005.
[31] Bülent Şahin Erdeğer, “Mezalim ve Soykırım Bağlamında ‘Ermeni Sorunu’ ”, Haksöz, May 2005, no.170, pp.36-48.
[32] Although missing quotation marks and the author’s failure to provide proper citation make this unclear, the source for Erdeğer’s quotation is Çetin Yetkin’s Türkiye’nin Devlet Yaşamında Yahudiler, (Istanbul: AFA Yayınları), 1992, p. 197. The italics of the second quotation, which is actually found in the footnote at the bottom of the page, are in the original article.
[33] M. Emin Kazcı, “Lobiler ve diplomasi”, Anadolu’da Vakit, February 6, 2007.
[34] Ben Harris, “ADL faces fight over Armenian Position”, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 7, 2007.
[35] “ADL Statement on the Armenian Genocide”, August 21, 2007, www.adl.org/PressRele/Mise_00/5114_00.htm
[36] For example Ertuğrul Özkök, “İsrail Türkiye’yi kaybedebilir”, Hürriyet, August 24, 2007; Ergun Babahan, “İsrail Türkiye’yi gözden mi çıkardı?”, Sabah, August 24, 2007.
[37] Fazıl Duygun, “Ermeni lobisi bastırdı, Panikleyen Yahudi, Dönmeler Rejimini Sattı…”, Baran, August 30, 2007, no. 34, p. 21. See also: Fazıl Duygun, “Ermeni Katliamlarından Suriye Saldırısına, “İsrail ve TC” Bağı”, Baran, September 13, 2007, no.36, p. 21.
[38] The plural used here “Promised Lands” (Vaat Edilmiş Topraklar) is not merely a Turkish grammatical idiosyncracy. Rather, it reflects here the widespread belief within the Islamic world that Jews—and more specifically the Zionist movement–view the entire area of the central Islamic lands “from the Nile to the Euphrates” as their divine inheritance, and are determined and actively attempting to expand Israel’s borders until it encompasses these areas. Thus, when the author speaks of “petroleum being found there”, this is a reflection not of author’s bad geological knowledge, but of his ideological outlook.
[39] The term increasingly used in Islamic circles for the Committee of Union and Progress (and used here, as well), is “İT”, for İttihat [ve] Terakki, since in addition to the acronym, the Turkish word it means dog, but is largely used as a pejorative; similar to calling someone a dog or swine in English.
[40] “Ermenilerin Yahudilere Atağı”, Aylık, no. 36, September 2007, p.40.
[41] The author is referring here to the “Profiles in Courage” award presented to Prime Minister Erdoğan by the American Jewish Congress on January 27, 2007 and the “Courage to Care” award, in memory of the Jews who were saved by Turkish diplomats from the Holocaust in World War II, presented by ADL on June 10, 2005.
[42] Aydoğan Vatandaş (1974- ) started his career as a veteran writer for the Fethullah Gülen-affiliated journal Aksiyon. In his 1997 book Armagedon: Türkiye-İsrail Gizli Savaşı (Armageddon: The Covert War of Turkey and Israel), Vatandaş claimed that former Deputy Chief of Staff Çevik Bir was of Dönme origin. Among his other works of apocalyptic conspiracy theory are: Agharta: Elektromanyetik Savaş Başladı (Agharta: the Electromagnetic War has begun) (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları), 2001; Apokalipse: Kıyametin Gizli Tarihi(Apocalypse: The Secret History of Doomsday) (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları), 1999; Kızıl Tarikat: Tokyo Moskova Washington Üçgeninde Kıyamet Silahları (The Red Sect: Doomsday Weapons in the Tokyo-Moscow-Washington Triangle) (Istanbul: Karakutu Yayınları), 2003; Kod adı: Kılıçbalığı/11Eylül Senaryosu (Code Name: Swordfish/The September 11th Scenario) (Istanbul: Karakutu Yayınları), 2002 and Kuru Kafa ve Kemik Tarikatının Gizli Tarihi (The Secret History of the Order of The Skull and Bones) (Istanbul: Q Matris Yayınları), 2003.
[43] Aydoğan Vatandaş, Asala Operasyonları Aslında Ne Oldu?, (Istanbul: Alfa Yayınları), 2005, pp. 110-111.
[44] Hrant Dink, “Gerçek maskaralık”, Agos, October 20, 2000.
[45] Hassasiyet”, Agos, October 27, 2000.
[46] “Jak Kamhi’ye devlet üstün hizmet madalyası”, Agos, August 24, 2007.
[47] Levon Panos Dabağyan, “Gidi Amerikan kemikçileri gidi Amerikan oğlanları sizi!”, Önce Vatan, September 14, 2007.
[48] Markar Esayan, “Efendi kim?”, Agos, May 28, 2004.
[49] In his book 100 Makale 100 Yorum (Istanbul: Karadağ Yayınları), 2006, which as its name might suggest is a compilation of 100 of his essays originally appearing in Önce Vatan, Dabağyan claimed that he was not an antisemite (p. 54), but then went on to repeat the well-worn antisemitic saw about Jewish domination of the U.N. (pp. 54-60), referred to Theodor Herzl as “a Zionist whose God is Gold” (p. 100), and claimed that the Armenian terrorist organization ASALA, which carried out a number of assassinations of Turkish diplomats in Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, had in fact been infiltrated by Zionists and was acting in accordance with Zionist designs (pp. 320-321).
[50] Ibid., pp. 139-140.
[51] Persian Friend, September 28, 2003, 12:11 p.m., Member No.: 1427, HyeForum>Politics>Genocide, http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7131.
[52] Emil Danielyan, “Who continues to destruct [sic] the Holocaust monument in Yerevan?”, February 2, 2006, http://168.am/en/articles/1506.
[53] Ani Değirmencioğlu’s, message dated March 5, 2006, posted in the Workshop for Armenian Turkish Scholarship listserve.
[54] Ece Temelkuran, “En uzak komşu Ermenistan”, Milliyet, May 17, 2006.
[55] “Ermenistan’daki Türk ve Yahudi düşmanlığı”, http://www.tetedeturc.com/home/article/.php?id_article=538.
[56] Hatice Sancaktar, “O şimdi Yahudi”, http://www.angelfire.com/wy/yaw/Ilgaz_Zorlu/Mulakat/mulakat.html
[57][57] Hanifi Altaş, “Dedikodu Tarihçiliği ve Yahudi – İslamcı Paslaşması!”, Yeni Hayat, Year 8, No. 91 (May, 2002), pp. 3-5.
[58] Ilgaz Zorlu, “Mehmet Şevket Eygi Hakkında”, www.sabetay.50g.com/gokyuzu/gökyuzu/html
[59] Ilgaz Zorlu, “Yazılanlar hakkında birkaç söz”, http://fl.parsimony.net/forum789/messages/9599.htm, March 17, 2003.
[60] Erol Elmas, “Büyüyemezsek Küçülürüz”, Yarın, November, 2005, pp. 32-37.
[61] Gürkan Hacır, “Onların MİT’i Mossad’i varsa, halkımızın da Yalçın Küçük’ü var”, Yeni Harman, No. 85 (October 1, 2005), pp. 8-12.
[62] Emin Şirin, “Yalçın Küçük’e inanmıyorum (!)…”, November 10, 2004, http://www.haberx.com/w/3205/yalcin-kucuk-inanmiyorum.htm.
[63] Israel Shamir, “An Etude in Cabbala”, in PaRDeS, www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/PardesEng.pdf. Shamir has been a champion of the ‘One Man, One Vote, One State’ position which sees in a single, united democratic state a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For more on the author and his beliefs, see: www.israelshamir.net.
[64] Gürkan Hacır, “Prof. Yalçın Küçük: Şimdi kapılar makarnacılara ve şarapçılara, beyaz saray tercümanlarına havluculara açıktır”, Yeni Harman, No. 92 (March 1, 2006).
[65] The article to which Vatandaş is referring is: Eyüp Can, “Musevi Lobisinden Dışişlerine Ermeni Soykırımı tasarısı için uyarı”, Referans, January 13, 2007.
[66] Aydoğan Vatandaş, “Hrant Dink Cinayeti: Bir taşla birkaç kuş”, January 19, 2007, www.sonsaniye.net/yazar9396.htm.
[67] Nuh Gönültaş, “Bizim başımıza gelenlerde Yahudi parmağı vardı!”, Bugün, February 2, 2007.
[68] For details on this entity please refer to section I.
[69] “The Greater Middle East is a political term invented by the Bush administration to englobe together various countries, pertaining to the Arab world, but also including the non-Arabic countries of Turkey, Iran, Israel, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Various Central Asian countries and the lower Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia) and Cyprus and Greece are sometimes also included. Some speakers may use the term to denote areas with significant Muslim majorities, but this usage is not universal. This expanded term was introduced in the U.S. administration’s administration’s preparatory work for the G8 summit of 2004 as part of a proposal for sweeping change in the way the West deals with the Middle East. This initiative is aimed at the Muslim world in the region and promoted heavily by neoconservative think tanks such as Project for the New American Century. It was outlined around the Helsinki Accords from 1975.” Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East . In the Turkish political culture “Greater Middle East” has been perceived as “an imperialistic project of the United States”.
[70] Baran is known to be published by persons sympathetic to the aims and means of the Islamist terror organization known as the [Paramilitary] Front of the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders İBDA-C (İslamî Büyük Doğu Akıncılar Cephesi), which has been implicated in numerous murders and other crimes within Turkey.
[71] The statement to which Açıkalın is alluding is the statement that Gökalp made in his own defense before the Court-Martial after the First World War, when he was on trial for his role in the killing of Armenians: “There was no Armenian massacre in Turkey, there was a [mutual] Turkish-Armenian massacre. They struck us from behind, and we struck [back]”. See: Zafer Toprak, “Ermeni Sorunu’nda Dünü İnşa Etmek ya da ‘Mukatele’nin İcadı”, Toplumsal Tarih, No. 147 (March, 2006), pp. 18-25.
[72] Dr. Hakkı Açıkalın, “Ermeni-dönme-İT-Türk-Kürt ve 2007”, Baran, No. 7 (February 22, 2007), pp. 10-11. As the reader may have already noticed, Açıkalın’s article represents yet another example of the unconscionable practice of ‘lifting’ of passages wholesale from the works of others. The section beginning after the bracketed asterisk [*] at the end of paragraph eight, and continuing until the middle of the penultimate paragraph was taken word for word from the article “Gizli bir savaş: Yahudiler Ermenilere karşı” cited in footnote 12 above. Additionally, the use of the acronym ‘İT’ for the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki [Cemiyeti]) is frequently used by conservative opponents of secularism and/or the Republic—both of which trends they see as originating with this organization–because the word ‘it’ in Turkish is a derogatory term with the approximate meaning of ‘lowly swine’ or ‘cur dog’. See further examples in the subsequent text.
[73] Enes Duman, ‘Damarlarda Zehirli Kan’, Aylık, April 2007, year 3, no. 31, p.10.
[74] Vahit Şekerci, “Who had Hrant Dink in their sights?”, El Aziz, January 24, 2007.
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