From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.history
Subject: Re: "sipa, sipa"... Why are you doing this?
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 22:35:03 EDT
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <visser.716528964@convex.convex.com> visser@convex.com (Lance Visser) writes:

>	I challange it based on the fact that you refuse to reveal how
>much money Professor Stanford J. Shaw has received and is receiving from
>the turkish government and various turkish organizations.  I contend

Here, visserian, a cuckoo clock. For you. But, the bird is dead. 
Now, let us refer to yet another Jew - shall we?

Source: Mark Alan Epstein, 'The Ottoman Jewish Communities and their Role
        in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,' Klaus Schwarz Werlag,
        Freiburg (1980).

  page 19:

 <<During the fifteenth century, when the Ottomans were struggling to
  reestablish themselves in the Balkans, there was considerable turmoil
  among the Jewish communities in Central and Western Europe. Even if
  the difficulties of the darker centuries immediately preceding the
  fourteenth are minimized, it is easy to understand the attraction which
  Ottoman life, particularly when compared to life in Europe, held for the
  Jews. There is no way to tell how many Jews left Christendom for the
  realm of the rising Muslim Ottomans, but with each account of persecution
  in or expulsion from Christian countries it is recorded that some Jews
  fled to Ottoman territory. The regularity of these reports suggests that
  the Ottomans were considered reasonably tolerant protectors and that
  there was a regular trickle of Jewish families moving southward and
  eastward from Western and Central Europe. (...) It is evident that the
  effects of plague, late crusades, and the general intolerance and
  persecution of Jews in Christian Europe resulted in the redirection
  of the whole focus of Jewish life which, for more than two centuries,
  was to be oriented toward Muslim East.>>

  page 21:

  <<In the second quarter of the sixteenth century the foremost official
  in the  Edirne Jewish community was Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati the Ashkenazi
  Chief Rabbi of the city. He was the most important rabbi in the city and
  the author of an important letter which tells us something of the situation
  of the Edirne Jewry in the fifteenth century. Sarfati himself was from
  Christian Europe and supposedly wrote this letter at the behest of two
  recent arrivals from there, who, upon seeing the prosperity and freedom
  of the Ottoman Jews, prevailed upon him to write their European
  coreligionists apprising them of the situation and urging them to migrate.
  This remarkable letter advised its recipients not only of the pleasant
  conditions in the Ottoman domains, but described as well the ease of
  travel to Palestine and the holy places, an attraction to those who
  would make a pilgrimage or choose to be buried there.>> (*)

  page 41:

 <<...the impression gained from the Hebrew sources is that the Jews were
 firmly aware of the community of interests which existed between them
 and the Ottomans, especially in comparison to relations with the Christians
 of Europe.

 Confirmation of the commonality of interests between Muslims and Jews is
 also indicated by the fact that European Christians perceived the Jews
 as allies of Islam and were well aware of Muslim-Jewish cooperation.
 Certainly the activity of important Jewish financiers and politicians
 representing the Ottoman government abroad did not pass unnoticed. European
 sources are the basis for much of our knowledge of their careers. In addition
 it appears that Christian pirates plundered ''Turks and Jews,''  their
 sworn enemies, and that Europeans considered the Jews to be agents who
 regularly reported to the Ottomans.

 There are well-known examples of overt Jewish support for the Ottomans
 in the struggle against European powers. The two best known instances
 of Jewish support for the campaigning Ottomans are the frequently cited
 instances of the Jewish contributions to the conquests of Buda, in the
 early sixteenth century, and of Rhodes. We also have reports of sympathy
 for the Ottomans during the siege of Chios. An unpublished Ottoman
 document shows dramatically the mutual interests which existed in some
 Greek towns...>>

 page 43:

  <<It is clear that throughout the sixteenth century it was a generally
 accepted fact that the interests of Jews and Muslims coincided frequently,
 and all parties involved, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, were aware of
 the situation.>>

 page 46:

 <<The general impression of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman context
 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is one of community of
 interests. From the earliest times the Ottomans seem to have welcomed
 Jews to their territory and to have found in the communities already
 existing in places which they conquered a cooperative element. The Jewish
 response to this tolerance was a steady flow of Jews from Christian
 countries to Ottoman domains.>>

(*) A version of Rabbi Sarfati's [Tzarfati] letter is given by Prof.Shaw:

  <<Your cries and sobs reached us. We have been told of all the troubles
  and persecutions which you have to suffer in the German lands....I hear
  the lamentation of my brethren...The barbarous and cruel nation ruthlessly
  oppresses the faithful children of the chosen people...The priests and
  prelates of Rome have risen. They wish to root out the memory of Jacob
  and erase the name of Israel. They always devise new persecutions. They
  wish to bring you to the stake...Listen my brethren, to the counsel I will
  give you. I too was born in Germany and studied Torah with the German
  rabbis. I was driven out of my native country and came to the Turkish land,
  which is blessed by God and filled with all good things. Here I found rest
  and happiness; Turkey can also become for you the land of peace...If you
  who live in Germany knew even a tenth of what God has blessed us with
  in this land, you would not consider any difficulties; you would set out
  to come to us...Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain
  of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver in our hands. We are
  not oppressed with heavy taxes, and our commerce is free and unhindered.
  Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap, and every one of us
  lives in peace and freedom. Here the Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow
  hat as a badge of shame, as is the case in Germany, where even wealth and
  great fortune are a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy
  among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him
  to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect
  your forces, and come to us. Here you will be free of your enemies, here
  you will find rest...>>[13]

[13] Israel Zinberg, A History Of Jewish Literature. vol.V. The Jewish
     Center of Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Hebrew Union College Press,
     Ktav Publishers, New York, 1974).

And an Armenian...

Source: "Men Are Like That" by Leonard Ramsden Hartill. The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Indianapolis (1926). (305 pages). 
(Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the genocide of 2.5 
 million Muslim people)

p. 133 (first paragraph)

"In this movement we took with us three thousand Turkish soldiers who
 had been captured by the Russians and left on our hands when the Russians
 abandoned the struggle. During our retreat to Karaklis two thousand of
 these poor devils were cruelly put to death. I was sickened by the
 brutality displayed, but could not make any effective protest. Some,
 mercifully, were shot. Many of them were burned to death. The method
 employed was to put a quantity of straw into a hut, and then after
 crowding the hut with Turks, set fire to the straw."

"Foreword:"

"For example, we were camped one night in a half-ruined Tartar mosque, the most
 habitable building of a destroyed village, near the border of Persia and
 Russian Armenia. During the course of evening I asked Ohanus if he could tell
 me anything of the history of the village and the cause of its destruction.
 In his matter of fact way he replied, Yes, I assisted in its sack and 
 destruction, and witnessed the slaying of those whose bones you saw to-day
 scattered among its ruins." 

p. 20 (second paragraph).

"Our men armed themselves, gathered together and advanced on the Tartar
 section of the village. There were no lights in the houses and the doors
 were barred, for the Tartars suspected what as to happen and were in great 
 fear. Our men hammered on the doors, but got no response; whereupon they
 smashed in the doors and began a carnage that continued until the last
 Tartar was slain. Throughout the hideous night, I cowered at home in terror,
 unable to shut my ears to the piercing screams of the helpless victims and
 the loud shouts of our men. By morning the work was finished."

p. 203 (second paragraph).

"One evening I passed through what had been a Tartar village. Among the 
 ruins a fire was burning. I went to the fire and saw seated about
 it a group of soldiers. Among them were two Tartar girls, mere children.
 The girls were crouched on the ground, crying softly with suppressed
 sobs. Lying scattered over the ground were broken household utensils and
 other furnishings of Tartar peasant homes. There were also bodies of the
 dead."

p. 204 (first paragraph).

"I was soon asleep. In the night I was awakened by the persistent crying of
 a child. I arose and went to investigate. A full moon enabled me to make
 my way about and revealed to me all the wreck and litter of the tragedy
 that had been enacted. Guided by the child's crying, I entered the yard of
 a house, which I judged from its appearance must have been the home of a
 Turkish family. There in a corner of the yard I found a women dead. Her
 throat had been cut. Lying on her breast was a small child, a girl about a
 year old."

p. 19 (first paragraph)

"The Tartar section of the town no longer existed, except as a pile of
 ruins. It had been destroyed and its inhabitants slaughtered. The same fate
 befell the Tartar section of Khankandi."

p. 99 (third paragraph)

"The Dashnacks took advantage of this situation and extended their 
 revolutionary activities into the Russian province. They instituted 
 a campaign of terrorism and employed threats and force in securing
 contributions to the party funds from rich Armenians. A wealthy
 man would be assessed a stipulated sum. Refusal to pay brought upon
 him a sentence of death. 

 Every member of the party was pledged to carry out orders without 
 question. If a man were to be assassinated, lots might be drawn to
 select an executioner or the job might be assigned to one of the
 'mauserists' of the party."

Serdar Argic

                     'This war quickly developed into one of extermination. 
                      We closed the roads and mountain passes that might 
                      serve as ways of escape for the Tartars [Turks] and 
                      then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)

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