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
Subject: "palik" money and the crimes of the Greek governments.
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 92 19:10:10 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <7899.3248.uupcb@factory.com> michael.polymenakos@factory.com (Michael Polymenakos) writes:

>A) The money comes from American citizens like myself and others who are
>looking out both for the interest of the US and the interest of Greece.

Will it make the crimes of the Greek governments disappear? Not a chance.

  <<In Corfu Jews were subjected to violent attacks and almost constant
   persecution by its Greek population. They had to row in the galleys
   even when they had committed no crime. They had to provide food and
   lodging for soldiers on demand, were required to go to Greek law courts
   on the Sabbath as well as during Jewish festivals, and as elsewhere in
   the Byzantine empire they were compelled to act as public executioners,
   adding to the public wrath to which they were normally subjected. After
   Venice took control of the island in 1386, conditions became even worse.>>

  <<There had been thousands of Jews living in Byzantium following the
   exodus from the Holy Land, but in consequence of all this persecution
   many were forcibly converted and massacred, and most of the remainder
   fled.....(...) As a result by the time the Ottomans conquered Anatolia
   during fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, hardly any Jews remained.>>

  <<Byzantium, however, was breaking up, fortunately for the few Jews
  who remained under its dominion. As the Turkomans invaded Anatolia
  starting with their rout of the Byzantine army at the Battle of
  Menzikert (1071) [Malazgirt] and formed Turkoman principalities
  throughout the peninsula, and as the Seljuk Turks established a more
  settled state centered, first in defense of the Abbasid Empire of
  Baghdad, and later in Konya and Central Anatolia starting the twelfth
  century (the Seljuks of Rum, 1077-1246), Byzantine Jewry sprang rapidly
  to their assistance, welcoming the tolerance and prosperity which the
  rule of Islam was offering them once again, as it had done previously
  both in the Middle East and Spain, with thousands of Jews fleeing from
  Byzantine persecution to Seljuk protection even before the Ottoman
  state was born.>>

  <<...Ottoman conquests marked a very substantial change for the Jews
  of the Middle East and Europe. They meant instant liberation, not only
  from subjugation, persecution, and humiliation but often from actual
  slavery in Christian hands. As a result, Jews contributed significantly
  to the Ottoman conquests.>>

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)


Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history