To: Letters@independent.co.uk
Cc: editor@independent.co.uk
Subject: Article by Robert Fisk “You’re talking nonsense, Mr Ambassador”
TISK-TISK, ROBERT FISK (Or shame on you Mr. know-it-all.)
(An Editorial)
Mahmut Esat Ozan
Chairman -Editorial Board
The Turkish Forum
Mr. Fisk, there is nothing worse in this world than being labeled a “know-it-all”. A person by that title is one who pretends to know something about everything but really knows nothing about anything . Since the knowledge of things you try to write about does not seem so great, you shouldn’t mind my asking you if you were familiar with the colloquialism we use in this country’s jargon, ( Tisk-Tisk) , an expression composed of two words which when it is placed in front of the name of an unfortunate person such as yours, it connotes that the person in question had done a shameful deed. And speaking of shameful deeds, Mr. Fisk, you seem to be ahead of many we know. You appear to be a genuine expert in that field. I, for one, have been noticing your irrational, biased, and prejudiccial behavior through the years, vis-à-vis the venerable nation of Turks. Every article you write concerning the Turks is replete with offensive passages, undeserved accusations, at times innuendoes, at others out and out lies hurled against them, the Turks about whom you claim they initiated the very first alleged genocide of the Twentieth century and decimated the Ottoman Armenians. The very latest of one of those irresponsible recriminations appeared in your latest drivels involving the Pope’s visit to Syria. You’ve been complaining that in the past 15 years 15 million Christians have abandoned their homes in the largely Muslim world.
What baffles me is the way you manipulate this piece of ordinary news and very cunningly relate it to your favorite subject “the alleged Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks.” You seem to be stuck on this one subject and sound like a broken record every time you bring it up.
The newest form of your idiosyncrasy, showing your obsession in defending the Armenian causes, is apparent in your following sentence: “Turkey’s genocide of its Armenian community in 1915 left the bones of one and a half million Christians across Anatolia and what is now northern Syria.” Really, Mr. Fisk what possible connection could you find between the visit of the head of world Catholicism and the alleged ‘genocidal events which may have taken place over eight decades ago. Allow me to read your twisted mind, Mr. Fisk. You are an incorrigible Turcophobe. You cannot help yourself. Chances are either you were born with that affliction or someone inculcated that prejudice into your feeble brain when you were most vulnerable to discrimination involving the Turks. In your last article you are quoting an obscure “Dr.Jarjour, whoever he may be, and whatever weight his words may carry. You tell us that this so-called Dr. instructs us, ‘-somewhat defensively- that the present-day Christian exodus is primarily economic.’
Nevertheless, you quote from him, or you extract from this poor fellow’s words the following quotation:: “I wouldn’t say at all that there is a religious factor , except in some cases like Turkey where Christians have been a little pressured recently.” Honestly Dr. Jarjour, or whatever your name is, and you Mr. Fisk, what was that ‘little pressure’ Turks inflicted on the Christians in Turkey? Are you referring to the Turkish government’s recent expenditures in renovating the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy building in Fener, in Istanbul?, or are you referring to the acquittal of a Syrian Armenian Priest who was accused to have made statements that his ancestors were the victims of a Turkish genocide in 1919? You were not fair , nor were you specific when Dr.Jarjour was talking to you against Turks.
You see, Mr. Fisk, I am proud to belong to that honorable nation of ‘Turks’, whose early ancestors brought civilization to the European continent, when its inhabitants were still wallowing in muddy huts and tribes decimated each other in fratricidal animalistic wars. Ottoman Turks, even then, knew how to vaccinate people against diseases caused by bacteriological factors. They were reaping the benefits of time-telling devices such as clocks etc. when the Europeans were about to discover the uses of ‘sundials’. A newly produced documentary film called, Empire of Faith narrated by the British actor, Ben Kingsley, of the ‘Ghandi’ fame was Extolling the superiority of the Muslim world. More than half of the presentation was consecrated to the achievements of the Turks in various fields, other than military, let alone their legendary tolerance and magnanimity in treating differing religions when Europe imposed on the Jews the cursed inquisitions and forced conversions.
When no Christian country wanted to admit into their domain any Jew expelled from Spain and Portugal, it was the Turkish Sultan ‘Beyazit’ who welcomed them into his vast empire to come and settle there and flourish in freedom of religion, and the pursuit of their own language, culture and trade..
Turks even sent sea-faring galleons to Spain to transport these unfortunate people, free of charge, to any and all points of their realm. Turks, for centuries, helped to enlighten your ancestors. Sometime it was a losing battle. Europeans learned from my ancestors, but they, in turn derided them at every chance they had.
There were, however, intellects such as the renown British anthropologist and historian Edson L. Clark (1827-1913) who said in his “Nations of the World Series,1900,N.Y. (pp. 84-87.) that the Turks whose honor and the dignity you have been pummeling and mauling these many years, were, and I quote: “…far better men and far abler rulers than the wretched tyrants whom they suppressed….the Turks were in advance, not of their Christian subjects alone, but of the greater part of Christian Europe.”
Mr. Fisk, I know that you British do not consider yourselves European.
However, you must admit that you live on the European continent and are a British Commonwealth member state of the European Union. What I am driving at, Mr. Fisk, is the fact that your ancestors were then as you are now, an inferior exemplification in comparison to the Turks. Let me elucidate a bit more by adding that you belong to the illustrious school of ‘Political Science’ of the turn of the century British Prime Minister, one Lloyd George who, when he was getting ready to “annihilate” the last remnants of the dying Ottoman Empire, was gloating by saying to the whole world the following:
“The Turks are a human cancer, a creeping agony in the flesh of the lands they misgovern, rotting every fiber of life. I am glad that the Turk is to be called to a final account (referring to the impending Greek invasion of Asia Minor ) for his long record of infamy against humanity.”
The British PM, not being an adequately -educated British subject, reminded me of you, Mr. Fisk. He was unaware of the above-mentioned quotation from Edson L. Clark. Thus, a rancorous, vindictive and vengeful Lloyd George, not Unlike yourself , launched a campaign, ‘doomed from the beginning’ in the Ottoman Turkish lands in Gallipoli, against those he called “human cancers” the Turks.
Even though aided by the French and the Anzak military forces and the world’s most formidable naval armada, the Allied forces were repulsed. Lloyd George not only lost his post as the Prime Minister of his disgruntled country, but he lost his honor and his shirt, too, in the process. In addition he carried down with him, to the abyss, his favorite, but incompetent advisor Winston Churchill, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty. The glorious victor of the Dardanelles, the military genius of the Gallipoli campaign, the great Mustafa Kemal had taught them a lesson they never forgot. Lloyd George died as a broken, destitute soul after having sheepishly underestimated and unjustly denigrated the noble Turk.
Let us hope that you, dear Mr. Fisk, may be spared such a predicament of fate.
Recently a Letter writer said the following to an English language publication. “I have been living in Turkey 8 months, and I intend to spend the rest of my life somewhere in your country. You have made me most welcome.
I’ m glad I chose your Turkey rather than England or France or any other European country. This gentleman’s words were familiar to me. I had read a passage from a Swedish king once. Hurriedly I checked my files and found what I was looking for. Mr. Fisk, I’d like to share Swedish King Charles VII’s words with you. And again, knowing the stuff you are made of, I suspect you may not enjoy it as much as the Friends of the Turks. Here’s that full quotation he wrote to his sister Ulrique-Eleanor in 1772:
“I was going to be a prisoner in Poltova, (Russian territory at that time) that would have been my death. I was saved on the shores of Bugh River. Then the danger became more imminent…I was saved. But today I am a prisoner of the Turks. What fire, steel, and floods were not able to do the Turks did. I don’t have chains on my feet. I am not in jail, either. I am free, free to do whatever I like . But I still am a prisoner- a prisoner of affection, of generosity, of nobility, of courtesy. The Turks have tied me with this diamond chain. Oh! if you knew how sweet it is to live as a free slave with people so affectionate, so noble, so gentle.” I hope you are listening Lloyd George, wherever you may be.
I’ve been asking myself the following question over and over again concerning you and people like you: “What is their problem.?” I try to answer my very own questions. I find no answers. I am unable to decipher the origin of your arrogance and your disrespectful behavior when it comes to Turks.
Your defense of the Armenian “riff-raffs who have made a profitable industry of accusing the Ottoman Turks of having perpetrated the most heinous of all crimes, the crime of genocide, and in the same breath denying that they have not even bloodied a single Turkish nose. When neutral, non-Turkish historians accept that for every Armenian who was killed in that civil war, within a World War in 1914-1918, four (4) Muslim Turks, Kurds, Sircassians, and Azerbaijanis lost their precious lives. But I guess you don’t pay too much attention to that because they were not Christian. Most observers can not tell us where this hatred for Turks is emerging. You are a part of that equation. The only source of frustration from which you are suffering may be the result of your government’s disability to prove that Turks were guilty of a premeditated so-called genocide. There was not an iota of evidence found in the infamous trials held on the island of Malta conducted by the British occupiers of the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, when they arrested and took with them a goodly portion of Ottoman government functionaries to the Island of Malta and imprisoned them for over a year, trying to extract from them juicy confessions, but at the end they totally failed. The final communiqué sent to Lord Curzon was very disappointing to the Armenians and their ‘bootlicker’ friend, such as you Mr. Fisk. The royal report had said at the time:
I REGRET TO INFORM YOUR LORDSHIP HERE WAS NOTHING THEREIN WHICH COULD
BE USED AS EVIDENCE AGAINST THE TURKS WHO ARE PRESENTLY BEING DETAINED AT MALTA…NO CONRETE FACTS BEING GIVEN WHICH COULD CONSTITUTE SATISFACTORY INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE…THE REPORTS IN QUESTION DO NOT APPEAR, IN ANY CASE,TO CONTAIN EVIDENCE AGAINST THE TURKS.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Fisk , if you still are unconvinced, then please listen to what the U.S. government had to say. The American General James G. Harbord, of the U.S. government’s investigative commission, sent to Anatolia in the fall of 1919 by none other than President Woodrow Wilson, declared unequivocally the following in his official report. General James G. Harbord concluded : The Turks and the Armenians lived in peace, side by side for centuries; that the Turks suffered as much as the Armenians at the time of relocations, that at the start of World War I and before, Armenians never had anything approaching a majority of the population in the territories they call : Western Armenia”; they would not have a majority even if all the deported Armenians returned; and the claims that returning Armenians would be in danger were not justified.”
Mr. Fisk, have you read the forged Adonian papers?, have you watched the often exhibited painting of the Armenian skulls piled up in a grotesque heap claiming that it was the Turks who had caused it to happen? Well, the photograph Armenians claim was taken in 1915, actually a stolen copy of a painting done in oil by a late Russian painter, named Vasily Vereschagin. The canvas is dated 1905 and it is still hanging in the Tretyakov Art Gallery in Moscow today. Now Mr. Fisk, I got a hunch you’ll deny this too, as you always do, instead you will invoke the infamous Hitler quotation as a last resort. Here is a rebuttal for it, also. Hitler may have been a monster as most claim, but nobody yet accused him for being a stupid individual.
According to Prof. Dr. Turkkaya Ataov,Chairman, International Relations Division, Ankara,Turkey, and the Nuremberg, Germany NAZI War Crimes Trials, that invented quotation does not hold any water. Adolf Hitler never made such an idiotic statement in his life. Prof. Ataov says, however, that Hitler said a few choice words about the Armenians, and that is true. He made one reference to the Armenians in a talk delivered on December 12, 1942, in which he described them as unreliable, (Unzuferlassig) and dangerous,(Gefahrlich). It is rumored also that Hitler was furious about the Armenians when he used those adjectives. I’m afraid those two adjectives were also appropriate to describe you and your unfortunate task against Turks. So, let us say once more: Tisk-Tisk, Robert Fisk. (Shame on you.)
meeozan@turkishforum,com