Dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.
Facts Are Stubborn Things
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Erdogan is deranged. Those who believe that the Turks are the only nation who haven’t committed racism throughout history are the same who believe that a purple cow just flew past my window.
If you only take into account WW1, the Turks managed to systematically wipe out more than 2 million Christian’s through direct slaughter and/or starvation: Armenian Genocide killed around 1 million people. The Assyrian Genocide killed around 300,000. The Greek Genocide estimates anywhere between 300,000-900,000 killed. The Great Famine of Mount Lebanon wiped out 200,000 of a population of 400,000 predominantly Maronite Christian’s because of the Ottoman grain blockade which starved the Christian’s. You only have to read the lives of the saints of the Eastern Churches of the 19th Century to know that the Turks ruled their territories with brutality and systematically killed the inhabitants of those territories. Racist doesn’t even begin to describe what they did.
Towards the close of its existence in 1914, the tottering Ottoman Empire launched a thorough census— quite an undertaking in those days. It took years, but the end result showed that the population of what is now Turkey was mostly Muslim (no surprise there), but also around 20% Christian and Jewish.
Today, 98.3% of the Turkish population considers itself Muslim.
In 1927, even after the repressions and losses of the late Ottoman Empire, the Greek population of Turkey stood at around 120k. By 1978 it was 7k.
There are several reasons for the vanishing of the Christian and Jewish population of Turkey in the past century: loss of territory in the Balkans, the Turkish government’s expulsion of ethnic Greeks, Jews emigrating to Israel, the 1942 wealth tax on non-Muslims, and government-engineered progroms such as the 1955 Istanbul Progrom which was aimed at the city’s Greek residents.
In 2009, Turkish then-Prime Minister Erdogan said Turkey had committed mistakes and that “those minorities with different ethnic identities were expelled from our country in the past. It was the result of fascist policy”. (Quoted in Asianews 12 July 2023 “Erdogan Attacks the Past, Labels Kemalist Ethnic Cleansing Fascist” )
Evidently Erdogan changed his mind about Turkey’s purge of its non-Muslim minorities. No genocide happened is his story now. The man might be a dictator, but he cannot change what’s true.
Islam being Islam. True to their bloody history and their “philosophy”, if it even deserves to be called that. Their god is not our God, and it behooves Christians to realize that, and act accordingly.
Amen Frank.
Ezabelle is of course correct— Turkey has, for the past century engaged in a determined policy of making its non-Muslim minorities disappear by any means necessary. My comment pointed out that they’ve been ‘successful’, and mentioned some non-genocidal ways that “cleansing” was accomplished, but I think I wasn’t clear that hell yes, genocide was very much one of the tools used.
“My comment pointed out that they’ve been ‘successful’, and mentioned some non-genocidal ways that “cleansing” was accomplished”
Yes important to note that the cleansing covered all facets of life under the Ottomans: There’s the taxes you mentioned which were higher for non-Muslims, and which were also imposed on women who were pregnant forcing them to pay on behalf of their unborn child. The taking of young male Christians in their youth and forcing them to convert to Islam and assimilate as Muslims. Not allowing Christians ownership of horses or livestock. Forced unpaid labour. Forcing Churches to be built lower than the height of the highest minarets in the city. Forcing non-Muslims to wear different clothing in order for them to be identified as non-Muslims. As you say Clinton- life was difficult under the Ottomans, if you weren’t Muslim.
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