From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history,soc.culture.soviet,soc.culture.yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: An unlikely scenario.
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 22:15:55 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <C01nDK.5LI@news.cso.uiuc.edu> ptg2351@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Panos Tamamidis ) writes:

> Of course, you are free to use your imagination ...

Why bother?

Source: Professor Stanford J. Shaw, 'The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the
        Turkish Republic,' New York University Press, New York (1991).

 pages 202-203:

  <<In 1865, immediately after enactment of the new Organic Statute for the
  Jewish community, and just as Jewish capital from Europe was beginning
  to have an effect in Istanbul, local Armenians and Greeks started a pogrom
  against Jews immediately across the sea of Marmara at Haydarpasa, terminus
  of the Anatolia railroad, with three hundred Jews massacred and many more
  beaten and raped before the disturbance was stopped after the Sultan sent
  his personal guard across the bay to protect the Jews [39].

  In later years, ritual murder attacks against Jews, carried out mostly
  by native Greeks, Armenians, and, in Arab provinces, by Maronites and
  other Arab Christians, often with the assistance of the local European
  consuls, took place throughout the empire. There were literally thousands
  of incidents continuously until World War I, in Southeastern Europe as far
  west and north as Monastir and Kavalla, in Istanbul, at Gallipoli and
  the Dardanelles, at Salonica, and in all the Arab provinces as far south
  as Damascus and Beirut and in Egypt at Cairo and Alexandria. These
  invariably resulted from accusations spread among Ottoman Christians
  by word of mouth, or published in their newspapers, often by Christian
  financiers and merchants anxious to get their Jewish competitors out of
  the way or to divert onto the Jews Muslim anger at reports of Christian
  massacres of Muslims in Southeastern Europe or Central Asia, resulting
  in individual and mob attacks on Jews, and the burning of their shops
  and homes.

  Individual experiences were horrible. Jews constantly went in fear of
  Armenian or Greek attacks in the streets of Ottoman cities. In Egypt
  and Syria, it was usually the Greeks who led the way, in many cases
  with the assistance of local Armenians and Syrian Christians, whose
  Greek, Arabic and French-language newspapers often printed all the
  rumors they could find regarding Jews, evidently with the desire of
  instigating violence. The Syrian Arab Christians in particular spread
  their long-standing anti-Semitic hatreds from Syria to Egypt, where
  their monopoly of the local press and their espousal of popular causes
  such as Egyptian nationalism and opposition to the British rule, enabled
  them to spread their anti-Jewish message among the Muslim masses with
  little question or opposition.

  On 20 June 1890, thus, Sir Evelyn Baring (later Lord Cromer), British
  High Commissioner in Egypt, received the following report from David
  and Nissim Ades, in Cairo:

    ''Sir,

      I beg sir to draw to your attention to the violent articles which
      has (sic) appeared in an Arabic paper called El Mahroussa which
      contained nothing but lies and false accusations against the Jews,
      especially those (the issues) of the 14th, 17th and 19th instant.
      Now, Sir, are we to have here an anti-Semitic party amidst fanaticism,
      Greeks, Armenians, etc., or is he to be allowed to continue to poison
      the people's minds with exaggeration and painted words? In an article,
      he asserted that the Jews use Christian blood for Passover, of course
      this has caused a deal of excitement.'' [40]

  Whenever Greek and other Orthodox religious authorities or prominent
  Greek business leaders or consuls were asked to help to stem the violence
  or reduce tension, they invariably indicated their cooperation and then
  failed to do anything to prevent attacks or punish those who stimulated
  or led them. [41]

  The leader of the Ashkenazi community of Corlu complained to the
  president of AIU [Alliance Israelite Universelle] in 1902 about
  persistent Greek attacks against its Jewish quarter:

    ''The fanatic Greeks of our city, as of other places in Thrace,
    have the habit of, contrary to the spirit of real Christianity,
    making a replica of Judas Iscariote and of burning it on the night
    of Holy Saturday. They construct a wooden figure, cover it with
    clothing which they claim is that of the ancient Jews, and they
    burn it publicly in the middle of a multitude of the ignorant and
    the fanatic. It often happens that this multitude, already excited
    by the tales of the suffering of Christ that has been made to them
    at the Church, is exaulted at the appearance of the execution of he
    who is supposed to have betrayed Christ, and works up a great anger
    against the Jews...For a long time we have known that each year,
    on such a day, they will cut off the heads and arms of the corpses
    in our cemetery and will burn them with great solemnity. We make
    no complaint about this in order not to create differences between
    the two communities. But this audacious madness of these fanatics
    has increased. We ourselves see the flames and hear the cries of
    hatred and vengeance against the Jews.''[42]>>


[39] El Tiempo, 28 April 1926; Galante, Istanbul I, 185; Galante, Documents V,
     340-41.

[40] FO 78/430, enclosed in Baring no.207 to Lord Salisbury, Cairo,
     25 June 1890, reprinted in Landau, 'Ritual Murder Accusations', p.450.

[41] Jacob Landau, 'Ritual Murder Accusations and Persecutions of Jews
     in Nineteenth Century Egypt', Sefunot V (1961), 425-427; for example
     see report in BAIU [Bulletin de l'Alliance Israelite Universelle:
     Deuxieme Serie (Paris)], first semestre 1881, pp.66-67. Galante also
     reported similar difficulties with the Greek religious leaders while
     he was teaching in Rhodes.

[42] Ashkenazi Community, Corlu, to AIU no.8783, 2 May 1902, in AIU
     Archives (Paris) II C 8, with report printed in El Tiempo of 1 May 1902.

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)