Posted on 11/19/2015 8:27:29 AM PST by Trumpinator
Bad choice of term “happy endings”
Me thinks the book of Revelations explain it.
Kemal Ataturk was the great bringer of Turkish secularism. Like later Muslim dictators in the Middle East, he regarded imam-driven political Islam as competition to be crushed. Nasser, both Assads, Saddam, & Gaddafi followed his example.
But Ataturk sowed mass murder among Christians in Asia Minor. He was part of the operation to exterminate Christian Armenians in 1915, and the entire Greek Christian community in the new Turkey was either wiped out or forced to flee.
Google Armenian Massacre
Thought that was a Chinese thing.
Much of the remnant that survived, unconverted, under the Ottomans were killed or driven west to Greece before, during, and after WWI (1913-1923). It’s called the Greek or Pontic genocide. The genocide of Armenians in the north on the edge of the Caucasus is more famous. I’ve been to Turkey many times and have encountered a few remaining Jews but, unlike in the Arab countries bordering like Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, I never met a living Christian.
Ataturk did not really bring secularism to Turkey but a nationalized Turkish new Islam to go with a nationalized ethnicity. On the face of it it seems better but ironically it was also genocidal because it was based on an exclusive nationalist religious identity.
I think the Greek side of genocide is downplayed because the Greeks could escape and their plight is more like an ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Turks (last one happened in Cyprus in the 1970s - so it is ongoing) but the Armenians had no easy escape to their own country nor could the west come to their aid - especially with the rise of communism in Russia.
A just solution would be to grant all the persecuted Christians in the Moslem world sanctuary in Israel, trading them one for one with Moslems discontented to live in a Jewish state, who can then go and live under a Moslem government.
I don’t think Israel would want that to be honest.
The Jewish state will protect Christians who are natives (and Muslim citizens, also) but I don’t see them opening their small country to Christians who would then change the demographics of Israel even more.
Bad idea. Middle Eastern chrstians are more anti-Jewish than the moslems are. Plus diluting the Jewish character of Israel is not something they want, regardless of which group does it.
Fixed it.
You’re right. And it’s also that the Armenian community here in the USA have done a better job making even the typically-ignorant-of-any-history-American vaguely aware of what happened. The Greek genocide was overshadowed first by the war and then by all the other post war migrations and “adjustments” in borders. But at least on the Greek side, for older people there I’ve met, the hatred still burns very hot.
IIRC, Arab Christians hate the Jews just as much as Arab Muslims. Kind of a me too wannabe thing.
Of course, some say that the massacre of Jerusalem in 1099 A.D. when Crusaders captured the city was contracted to local Christians when it came to killing Jews. This was because the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem had required non-Muslims also to wear Islamic garb. Hard to sort out.
Arab Christians are probably native Jews who converted to Christianity at the beginning of the religion since they predate the arrival of Islam and would not have converted afterwards.
But anyway, many eastern Christians think American Protestants have them marked for death since American policies since the cold war ended have been a horror show for eastern Christians.
Go to youtube for Walter Cronkite’s Twentieth Century piece, “The Incredible Turk”.
Ataturk did romanize written Turkish, outlawed the fez, liberated women sort of, and closed Hagia Sophia as a mosque. He abolished the Caliphate but again that may have been a competition thing.
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