Turkish Forum

Author: Aylin D. Miller

  • “They Can Live in the Desert but No where Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide by Ronald Grigor Suny (review)

    “They Can Live in the Desert but No where Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide by Ronald Grigor Suny (review)

    Edward J. Erickson

    From: The Middle East Journal
    Volume 69, Number 3, Summer 2015
    pp. 492-495

    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Professor Ronald Grigor Suny is a distinguished scholar and a well-published historian. He is known for his body of work specializing in Armenian history and affairs. The title of the book comes from a conversation that American ambassador Henry Morgenthau reported he had with Ottoman interior minister Talat Pasha in early August 1915 (p. 269–270), which Suny purports to show that Talat had solved the Armenian “problem” in a particularly brutal manner. The introduction presents Professor Suny’s thesis is a roundabout manner, which is to explain that the Young Turks (the alleged perpetrators of a genocide) had an “affective disposition” that “allowed them, indeed in their minds required them, to eliminate whole peoples” (p. xx). Essentially, Suny argues that the Young Turks’ cognitive and emotional state demonstrated by their observed behavior and actions in 1915 proves a genocide. While this kind of argument may be suitable for forensic psychologists, historians rarely attempt it because of the dictum that correlation does not prove causation.“They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else” is a narrative presentation that begins with the history of the early kingdom of Armenia and moves through the 19th century with an explanation of the evolving political, economic, and social relationships between the Armenians and the Ottomans. Suny then discusses the rise of the Armenian revolutionary committees and how the Young Turks’ rise to power and counterrevolution affected these relationships. This takes over half the book and sets up the reader’s understanding of the Young Turks’ “affective disposition” to regard the Ottoman Armenians with fear and distrust. Chapter Seven is titled “War” (pp. 208–45) and contains a fine description of the how and why the Young Turks went to war as well an explanation of the ideological fissures within the Armenian revolutionary committees and Ottoman Armenian polity. Chapter Eight, “Removal” (pp. 246–80), deals with the academically contentious period of January through June 1915 and presents Suny’s view of the decision to relocate the Ottoman Armenians from eastern Anatolia. The lens though which Suny frames his understanding of the relocations comes primarily from American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau’s diary (39 of 134 chapter endnotes), which was published after these events, in 1918 after the United States entered the war against the Central Powers, as well as from information contained in Raymond Kévorkian and Taner Akçam’s books.

    In Chapter Nine, “Genocide” (pp. 281– 327), Suny presents the heart of his case. Here he asserts that that fear and a profound sense of insecurity compounded by defeats and Allied threats, combined into “a toxic perception of all Armenians as an internal subversive force allied to the Russians” (p. 281). He also repeats Akçam’s fallacious conclusion that “the allegations of an Armenian revolt in the [Ottoman] documents . . . have no basis in reality but were deliberately fabricated” (p. 282) as a factual statement of evidence. Later in the chapter Suny asserts that the relocation camps in the Euphrates valley were “way stations toward extermination” (p. 314) but presents no archival sources to support this. Chapter Ten, “Orphaned Nation (pp. 328–49), concludes the historical narrative with the events of 1918–23, including the 1919 show trials and the Armenian assassinations of surviving members of the Committee of Unity and Progress. Suny’s final chapter, “Thinking about the Unthinkable: Genocide” (pp. 350–365), summarizes his thoughts and juxtaposes the work of Raphael Lemkin (the international lawyer who coined the term “genocide”) into the narrative.

    There is nothing new in this book for scholars or for those familiar with the extant literature. The book is derived exclusively from previously available secondary materials. The absence of a bibliography, which would clearly demonstrate this, is telling in this regard. That said, some of Professor Suny’s positions are surprising and noteworthy. Similarly to Donald Bloxham, Hilmar Kaiser, Taner Akçam, and very recently Robert Melson, Suny subscribes to the idea of cumulative radicalization, which essentially negates the accusation of premeditation on the part of the Young Turks. Suny also argues that the Young Turk leadership were “never purely ethnonationalists, never religious fanatics, but remained Ottoman modernizers in their fundamental self-conception. They were…


  • WHAT KIND OF “RECONCILIATION” IS THE HRANT-DINK FOUNDATION PROMOTING? – Maxime GAUIN

    WHAT KIND OF “RECONCILIATION” IS THE HRANT-DINK FOUNDATION PROMOTING? – Maxime GAUIN

    Maxime GAUIN

    Researcher, AVIM

     

    The Hrant-Dink Foundation (HDV) initiated some years ago a program to fund travels of Turkish citizens to Armenia, arguing that mutual understanding between people will facilitate peace. Presented as such, nobody can reasonably be against such a program. The problem is that, in practice, the program is far from achieving the claimed goals. I am taking here the example of a participant who recently spent three months in Yerevan thanks a grant of the HDV – not because of the importance of the author, who is not well-known, but because of what her conclusions say on the methods and practices of the HDV. The summary of these three months, published on an Armenian web site,[i] is more than surprising as a whole, but particularly surprising because of three key remarks.

     

    1) “I recalled the Armenian terrorist organization ASALA’s killing of Turkish diplomats around the world in the seventies. They did it to force discussion of the Armenian Genocide.”

     

    Except the use of the adjective “terrorist,” the presence of which is unusual for an Armenian website, these words are truly unbelievable. The less serious aspect is their inaccuracy. The attacks perpetrated by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) were not limited to the 1970s: the last one took place in Brussels, on June 23, 1997.[ii] In addition, as late as 2008-2009, the association of the veterans of ASALA in Yerevan silenced an Armenian Australian scholar, Armen Gakavian, who wanted to launch a petition denouncing Armenian terrorism and the war crimes perpetrated during the WWI by the Armenians of the Russian army against Muslim Ottoman civilians.[iii] Indeed, more than 500,000 Muslims were killed by Armenians and Cossacks in eastern Anatolia from 1914 to 1918,[iv] and more than 150,000 others in western Anatolia by the Greek armed forces, including Armenian volunteers units, from 1919 to 1922[v] – typically the kind of “historical details” the Hrant-Dink Foundation does not recall frequently.

     

    The majority of the Turkish diplomats assassinated by Armenian terrorists (1973-1984) were not killed by the ASALA, but by the Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide, a terrorist organization established and controlled by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the most powerful party of the Armenian diaspora, which also participated to the Armenian cabinet from 1998 to 2008.[vi] The ASALA is better known because of its bombing in public places, such as the Turkish Tourism Bureau of Rome (1980), the airports of Ankara-Esenboğa (1982) and Paris-Orly (1983), or the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul (1983). In fact, the majority (40 out of about 70) of the persons killed by Armenian terrorists during the 1970s and 1980s were not diplomats or members of their family.

     

    The worst aspect of these words is that their author purely and simply repeats the Armenian nationalist propaganda that justified -and still justifies today- Armenian terrorism. It is barely necessary to recall that the ASALA never wished any “discussion” on the events of 1915-16, instead they wished to impose their views on these events. These terrorists even tried to kill U.S. historian Stanford Jay Shaw, in 1977 and 1982, just because he presented arguments the Armenian fanatics did not like.[vii] Kaşo says nothing about the racism of the ASALA and JCAG, who killed Turks in public places for the sole and only crimes of being Turkish – or about the participation of the ASALA to the anti-Semitic bombing in rue Copernic, Paris, due to the extremely virulent hatred of Jews by most of the Armenian nationalists, particularly in the ASALA.[viii] She says nothing about the territorial claims which were the main topic exposed in the communiqués of both ASALA and JCAG during the 1970s and 1980s. However, she uses the words “Western Armenia,” typical of contemporary Armenian irredentism against Turkey. In fact, it is quite in conformity with the official, recurrent glorification of Armenian terrorism in contemporary Armenia.[ix]

     

    Certainly, the Hrant-Dink Foundation is not a monolithic group, and I have direct evidence for this; but it does not prevent the noticing of what this organization, as a whole, promotes. More than two weeks after the publication of the text commented here, the Foundation has still not distanced itself from the text’s whitewashing of Armenian terrorism. The question that needs to be answered is this: What words are needed to best describe the paradox of a Foundation that took the name a victim of a terrorist act, but nevertheless funded a trip that leads to excuses for terrorist assassinations? This is a question that is left to the reader to answer for their own.

     

    2) “Just as Turkey has racists, Armenia has its own.”

     

    No word less strong than “disinformation” can describe this sentence appropriately. The official ideology in Armenia today is an extremely racist one. The statement of principles of the Republican Party of Armenia, in power since 1998, cites only one person: G. Nzhdeh (Nejdeh).[x] Tributes are regularly paid to Nzhdeh in the main intellectual institutions of Armenia, such as the State University of Yerevan.[xi] There is a memorial for Nzhdeh in Yerevan, his name was given to a metro station of the capital city of Armenia and a new statue will be soon unveiled. The only controversy regarding this statue, last year, was about its location. The media and political consensus calls him a hero.[xii] But who was Nzhdeh? He described himself as racist, fascist and Nazi. Nejdeh, who exterminated Azeris in Armenia from 1918 to 1920, later said: “Today Germany and Italy are strong because as a nation they live and breathe in terms of race” (Hairenik Weekly, 10 April 1936). As early as 1933, his party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), gave him the responsibility to establish the youth organization in the U.S., and Nejdeh chosen as name “Tzeghagron,” which means: “the religion of race”. The group still exists, but changed its name into “Armenian Youth Federation” in 1943. At the beginning of the Second World War, Nzhdeh went to Germany, to wear the uniform of the Third Reich. He was a member of the Armenian National Council, established in December 1942 with the endorsement of Alfred Rosenberg, the minister of Hitler for the eastern conquered territories.[xiii]

     

    After having recalled such facts in the Hürriyet Daily News, I received a message of congratulation from Yerevan. I wish -from the deepest of my heart- that this comment was something like: “You wrote an interesting piece, but you have missed this and this article criticizing the glorification of Nzhdeh.” Yet, there was actually no such factual correction – not a single critique. And nobody else even tried to give a simple nuance to my findings.

     

    This racist ideology has very concrete consequences. From 1987 to 1989, all the remaining Azeris of Armenia were expelled.[xiv] In 1992, Armenia invaded Western Azerbaijan (the Nagorno-Karabakh as well as seven other districts, inhabited almost only by ethnic Azeris), exterminated thousands of Azeri civilians (especially in Khodjaly: at least 613, and more likely 763, were killed in one night in this city) and expelled all the others. The author has nothing to say about these racist crimes. Past President Khocharian justified these acts of ethnic cleansing by the “ethnic incompatibility” between the Armenians and the Azeris – a mere non-sense: In spite of the conflict, 30,000 ethnic Armenians with Azerbaijani citizenship are still in Azerbaijan today;[xv] in spite of the constitutional value of the territorial claims against Turkey (reaffirmed by the Constitutional Court of Armenia in 2010), this country accepts on its soil tens of thousands illegal Armenian immigrants and even allows them to send their children to Armenian schools in Istanbul.

     

    In addition, the Jewish community in Armenia has virtually disappeared after the independence, largely because of the exceptionally high level of anti-Semitism in this country,[xvi] and the only remaining minority, the Yezidis, is facing disappearance, because of emigration, itself due to the clear intolerance of a large section of the population.[xvii] Armenia is the only country of the region which is both independent and virtually mono-ethnic.

     

    3) “Public Information and Need of Knowledge (PINK), the LGBT rights advocate NGO for which I worked, was a temple of joy.”

     

    This is the beginning of a development that, once again, is disinformation. I have no evidence against the good faith of the activists promoting the LGBT rights in Armenia, and so no intention to deny it. The problem is that such persons are confronted to an extreme intolerance. PINK itself ordered a survey in 2011, and 72 percent of the 1,189 respondents (a significant number for a small country such as Armenia) explained that the state should take measures to “fight against homosexuals.” Even more strikingly, on May 8, 2012, a gay-friendly bar of Yerevan was targeted by a Molotov cocktail attack. The chairman of the ARF block in the Armenian National Assembly, Artsvik Minassian (Minasyan), paid to obtain the release of the perpetrators.[xviii] Five months later, a nationalist demonstration was organized in front of the German embassy of Yerevan, because Germany had funded the distribution of a Serbian film mentioning (more than dealing with) homosexuality. Describing the LGTB rights advocacy in Armenia without saying anything about the problems they face is a serious distortion of truth.

     

    Reconciliation cannot be based on the denial of the wrongdoings of the Armenian side and/or on the exaggeration of the wrongdoings of the Turkish side[xix] – and this selective indignation is unfortunately not new.[xx] Such denial and exaggeration does not promote reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, it instead promotes self-hatred amongst Turks.

     

    [i]

    [ii]

    [iii]

    [iv] Yusuf Sarınay, Ermeniler Tarafından Yapılan Katliam Belgeleri, Ankara, 2001, volume I, p. 377 and volume II, p. 1053. Those who find this figure surprisingly high should consider the conclusions of British Captain C. L. Wooley, who affirmed, after an investigation on place, that between 300,000 and 400,000 Muslims were butchered by Armenian nationalists in a part of eastern Anatolia only: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: the Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995, p. 238, n. 75; Jeremy Salt, The Unmaking of the Middle East, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 2008, p. 67.

    [v] In a report submitted to the Quai d’Orsay on July 27, 1922 (Archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères, La Courneuve, microfilm P 1380), Elzéar Guiffray, the elected chief of the French community in Izmir, gave numerous and precise examples of burned villages, slaughters, assassinations, arbitrary arrests and inhuman conditions of detention, adding that “without exaggeration,” the number of Turks killed by the Greek forces (which included, at least in some cases, Armenian volunteers) since May 1919 is in excess of 150,000, “without counting the deported persons, estimated to be 300,000.” Writing in July, Guiffray could not describe the most violent period, namely the Greek withdrawal of August-September: Caleb Frank Gates, Not to Me Only, Princeton-London: Princeton University Press/Oxford University Press, 1940, p. 283; Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile…, pp. 279-284 and 292-306. On the Armenian participation to this last stage, see the report of C. Toureille in the same microfilm than the one of Guiffray.

    [vi] Michael M. Gunter, “Pursuing the Just Cause of their People.” A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism, Westport-New York-London: Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 55-56 and 68-69; Gaïdz Minassian, Guerre et terrorisme arméniens, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2002, pp. 22-23, 28, 32-34 and 44-45.

    [vii] “Crude Bomb Explodes at UCLA Professor’s Home”, The Los Angeles Times, 4 October 1977, p. D1 ; “Armenian Terrorism: Near East Feud Rages in America”, The Washington Post, 17 May 1982, p. A1 ; “Press Clanger”, Times Higher Education, 1st April 1996,

    [viii] Nathalie Cettina, Terrorisme : l’histoire de sa mondialisation, Paris : L’Harmattan, 2001, pp. 45-46.

    [ix] For instance: https://www.rferl.org/a/1142396.html

    [x] Turgut Kerem Tuncel, Armenian Diaspora, Ankara: Terazi, 2014, pp. 309-311. Also see: http://www.hhk.am/en/rpa-library/

    [xi]

    [xii]

    [xiii] John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian), Under Cover. My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America, New York: E. P. Dutton & C°, 1943, pp. 81-82; Yves Ternon, La Cause arménienne, Paris, Le Seuil, 1983, p. 132; Christopher Walker, Armenia. The Survival of a Nation, London-New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 357.

    [xiv] Ariel Kyrou and Maxime Mardoukhaïev, « Le Haut-Karabagh, vu du côté Azerbaïdjan », Hérodote, n° 54-55, 4e trimestre 1989, pp. 265-267.

    [xv] UNHCR, International Protection Considerations Regarding Azerbaijani Asylum-Seekers and Refugees, Geneva, 2003, p. 4.

    [xvi]

    [xvii] « Demandeurs d’asile : un long et douloureux parcours », Ouest France, 11 mars 2011 ; « Chalon — Expulsion : très inquiets pour David Tamoev et sa famille », Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire, 21 novembre 2014 ; « La Cimade défend l’asile d’un Kurde d’Arménie », Sud Ouest, 10 January 2015.

    [xviii]

    [xix] I am, of course, referring to the misuse of the word “genocide.” In this regard, see, to begin, Edward J. Erickson, Ottomans and Armenians. A Study in Counter-Insurgency, New York-London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013; Maxime Gauin, “Review Essay — ’Proving’ a ‘Crime against Humanity?’”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, volume 35, number 1, 2015, pp. 141-157; and Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005 (Turkish translation: 1915. Osmanlı Ermenilerine Ne Oldu?, Istanbul, Timaş, 2011).

    [xx]

     

  • Turkish Military and ISIS in Conflict, One Officer Dead

    Turkish Military and ISIS in Conflict, One Officer Dead

    Militants of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) fired shots from across the border in Syria which struck and killed an officer and wounded five soldiers in Turkey’s southern Kilis province on Thursday.

    Local sources reported that Turkish soldiers and militants of ISIS are in an armed conflict at the Çobanbey town located across from the Elbeyli village connected to the Kilis province.

    It has been reported that first Turkish tanks took gunfire as light weapons were used in response to the attack. The Ayyaşe Turkmen village, which is located close to the border has been completely evacuated to nearby villages.

    Turkey retaliated immediately with 4 tanks within rules of engagement, hit opposing ISIS posts, Turkey’s Office of Public Diplomacy said in a statement.

    Turkish Air Force dispatched multiple F-16 fighter jets from Diyarbakır airbase to the conflict zone on the Turkey-Syria border, Turkey’s Ihlas News Agency reported.

    Security forces came under fire from Syria, Kilis Governor Süleyman Tapsız told Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency. Turkish forces responded by targeting positions across the border. Reports suggested one ISIS militant was killed.

    “Unfortunately, one of our officers, Yalçın Nane, has been martyred and two sergeants injured,” Tapsız said.

    The wounded sergeants, Fatih Kurt and Necef Çakmaktepe, have been taken to Kilis State Hospital and are in stable condition, he added.

    The incident came after the murder of two policemen by the outlawed PKK on Wednesday and a deadly suicide bombing in Suruç on Monday that killed 32 people. Both incidents took place in Turkey’s southeastern Şanlıurfa province, near the Syrian border.

     

     

  • Pope Francis: “Koran And Holy Bible Are The Same”

    Pope Francis: “Koran And Holy Bible Are The Same”

    washington post

    On Monday the Bishop Of Rome addressed Catholic followers regarding the dire importance of exhibiting religious tolerance. During his hour-long speech, a smiling Pope Francis was quoted telling the Vatican’s guests that the Koran, and the spiritual teachings contained therein, are just as valid as the Holy Bible.

    “Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Jehovah, Allah. These are all names employed to describe an entity that is distinctly the same across the world. For centuries, blood has been needlessly shed because of the desire to segregate our faiths. This, however, should be the very concept which unites us as people, as nations, and as a world bound by faith. Together, we can bring about an unprecedented age of peace, all we need to achieve such a state is respect each others beliefs, for we are all children of God regardless of the name we choose to address him by. We can accomplish miraculous things in the world by merging our faiths, and the time for such a movement is now. No longer shall we slaughter our neighbors over differences in reference to their God.”

    The pontiff drew harsh criticisms in December after photos of the 78-year-old Catholic leader was released depicting Pope Francis kissing a Koran. The Muslim Holy Book was given to Francis during a meeting with Muslim leaders after a lengthy Muslim prayer held at the Vatican.

     

    St. John Paul II has courted several controversies since being elected as Pope Benedicto XVI’s replacement in 2013. Francis has gone on record to say that homosexuals are not to be judged, Proselytism is nonsense and has endorsed the usage of contraceptive by Catholics.

    The Vatican will meet again with Muslim leaders in late February where they plan to talk about further steps that can be taken to spread understanding and awareness of the Islamic religion.

  • “Ottomans Were The First to Reach The Moon,” says Turkish President

    “Ottomans Were The First to Reach The Moon,” says Turkish President

    KAYNAK:

    by Barbara Johnson

    Istanbul| Ottomans were the first to walk on the surface of the moon, not Neil Armstrong, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, yesterday, during an iftar (fast-breaking) dinner hosted by the Turkish Green Crescent.

    Mr. Erdoğan claimed that Muslim explorers reached the Moon more than 300 years before the beginning of the Appolo program, vowing to build a mosque “in the crater” where they landed.

    “It is alleged that the first man to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong in 1969,” Erdoğan said. “In fact, Muslim space explorers reached our satellite 334 years before that, in 1635. Everyone knows the story of the famous aviator, Lagâri Hasan Çelebi, the “Ottoman Rocket Man”, who made the first successful manned rocket flight in 1633. What you might not know, is that he attempted to reach the moon, two years later, and could very well have succeeded!”

    The story of Lagari Hasan Çelebi was purported by a famous 17th century Arab merchant and traveller, Mehmed Zilli, also known as Evliya Çelebi. In his famous travelog, he explains that Lagari Hasan Çelebi launched in a 7-winged rocket using 50 okka (63.5 kg or 140 lbs) of gunpowder. It took off from Sarayburnu, a site below the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul.

    As Evliya Celebi wrote, Lagari proclaimed before launch “O my sultan! Be blessed, I am going to talk to Jesus!”, before lighting the rocket’s gunpowder.  He then ascended more than 200 meters in the air and landed in the sea, hundreds of meters from his takeoff point. Swimming ashore, he allegedly reported: “O my sultan! Jesus sends his regards to you!”.

    President Erdoğan’s surprising claim generated some whispers and laughter from the audience, a reaction that clearly angered the Turkish politician. He slammed the skeptics for mocking his claims, adding that he would soon have the proofs to back his claims.

    “Why do you not believe it? Because you’ve never believed that a Muslim can do such a thing, just like you’ve never believed that our ancestors could manage to launch ships in the Golden Horn after transporting them across land,” Erdoğan said, referring to Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II’s conquest of Istanbul in 1453. “This claim is not new. A number of academics in Turkey and in the rest of the world have made this claim, and I believe they are right. NASA may have destroyed most of the physical evidence of the Ottoman’s success during the Apollo 11 mission, but we’ll try to find any evidence that might have escaped the cover up.”

    The Turkish President did not, however, give any precision about the proofs he was expecting to find nor how he was hoping to gather them.

    The story of Lagâri Hasan Çelebi is considered a legend by most historians, and most experts believe that it is impossible that the “aviator” could have survived a flight into outer space.

    His first flight was, indeed, addressed in an experiment by the television show MythBusters, on November 11, 2009, in the episode “Crash and Burn”.  The rocket constructed for the TV show did not adhere closely, however, to Evliya Çelebi’s descriptions and the final design did not attempt to utilize materials of the period;

    The team noted that Evliya Çelebi had not sufficiently specified the alleged design used by Lagâri Hasan, but concluded that it would have been “extremely difficult” for a 17th-century figure, without access to modern steel alloys and welding techniques, to land safely or even achieve thrust at all. This conclusion was backed by the fact that, although the re-imagined rocket rose, it exploded in midflight

    History Moon Science space Space Travel Turkey
    Comments
    Newer Comments →
    1. MARK LANDIS says:
      July 7, 2015 at 3:59 pm

      EVEN IF HE MADE A ROCKET THAT WOULD REACH THE MOON HE NEVER TOOK IN THE FACT THERE IS NO OXYGEN IN SPACE OR ON THE MOON

      Reply
    2. jos van Veen says:
      July 7, 2015 at 5:35 pm

      de man wordt steeds zieliger…

      misschien denkt hij dat minaretten de raketten zijn…of zo

      Je vindt dit soort gedrag ook bij lijders aan syphillis, gevorderd stadium

      Tijd voor het gesticht voordat er echt domme dingen gebeuren

      Reply
    3. Sub says:
      July 7, 2015 at 6:35 pm

      I may be the only one to notice this, but the author refers to the show “Mythbusters” and says

      “the final design did not attempt to utilize materials of the period;”

      I would like to clarify that the reason the final design did not utilize materials of the time is because they try to test the myth using time appropriate materials and methods, and if this fails, they then attempt to re-create it using modern methods.

      Reply
    4. Craig says:
      July 13, 2015 at 5:45 pm

      Did he bring back drawings as proof?

      Reply
      • Ray Martin says:
        July 13, 2015 at 7:31 pm

        He was unable to to do that because, as you probably know, drawings are forbidden by the Koran.

      • Kutay says:
        July 14, 2015 at 11:08 am

        @Roy Martin, Mehmet II was the first emperor who painted his portrait.

      • Lessie says:
        July 15, 2015 at 12:26 pm

        @Kutay. Yeah after him, his son sold the portrait to non-muslims and banned to drawing

    5. MrFurious says:
      July 13, 2015 at 5:48 pm

      This guy is the president of a nation. How scary is that?

      Reply
      • Stephen Tyler says:
        July 13, 2015 at 6:23 pm

        Actually, it was pretty scary having George W Bush in the hot seat. He and Mr Erdoğan would have some verrry interesting conversations – without needing to get stoned first.

      • Ali Emre Demir says:
        July 14, 2015 at 1:36 am

        Unfortunately, he is our president

      • Berkay says:
        July 14, 2015 at 8:32 am

        The scary thing is if you living in that nation and witness all the things that man do and see how much supporters he has.This is an embarasment.

      • deniz says:
        July 15, 2015 at 11:10 am

        Poor secular turkish people this tayyip is the emberesment of Turkey

  • Ankara cracks down on IS; but is it too little too late?

    Ankara cracks down on IS; but is it too little too late?

    Members of the Turkish police counterattack team responsible for guarding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stand in front of a mosque as Erdogan departs, following Friday prayers in Istanbul, May 29, 2015.  (photo by REUTERS/Murad Sezer)

    Estranged from his family and ravaged by a drug habit for most of his adult life, Murat reckoned he had nothing to lose the day he left his home in Ankara for the self-proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State (IS). As he crossed the Syrian border in full view of Turkish troops in February 2014, Murat concluded that his own government was equally nonchalant about his future. When the 29-year-old returned home late last month, he discovered that the rules of engagement along Turkey’s border had changed. Apprehended by the Turkish military within minutes of his crossing, Murat was arrested and charged with membership in a terrorist organization.

    Turkey has recently moved to counter Islamic State recruitment in the country, but it faces a difficult time reintegrating jihadist returnees from Syria and Iraq, some of whom have been traumatized by their experiences.
    Author Noah Blaser Posted July 13, 2015

    Released pending trial, Murat returned to his tumbledown home district of Haci Bayram, in Ankara, to find police staking out the men who had helped funnel recruits like himself into Syria. “It was never like this before,” said Murat, who asked that his real name be withheld for fear of retribution. “Now there are police here. Now we are being followed.”

    On July 10, Turkey launched its first major crackdown on IS’ domestic recruitment network, detaining 18 Turkish citizens and three foreign nationals and confiscating a cache of assault weapons and military uniforms. Of the 21 people taken into custody in raids around the country, including in Haci Bayram, police detained at least 12 of the suspects and pressed charges against the other nine.

    While Turkey has markedly stepped up detention of would-be foreign jihadists at airports and border crossings over the past year, it had avoided domestic crackdowns and neglected censoring Turkish-language jihadist websites and other media.

    “After launching 10 raids this past week, Ankara is showing it thinks the IS can no longer be managed by de facto nonaggression,” said Aaron Stein of the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank. “Turkey is conceding to a more US-styled approach,” he said, pointing to a meeting between US and Turkish officials just days before the arrests. Turkish officials, however, have downplayed the significance of the meeting. “Serious operations take months to plan out and Turkey has long showed its resolve against the [IS],” said a Turkish official who requested anonymity.

    In Haci Bayram, the arrests represent a once unimaginable about-face. Last year, despite reports that the neighborhood — long blighted by drug use and sweeping urban renewal — had become a major IS recruitment hub, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced foreign news reports of jihadist recruitment in Haci Bayram as a campaign of “shamelessness, sordidness and vileness.” Turkey’s pro-government press forcefully denied the reports and took aim at New York Times reporter Ceylan Yeginsu, who fled the country amid a flurry of death threats.

    Although Turkish police have acted in Haci Bayram and other IS hot spots, it will be a struggle to manage the returning fighters who in the end walk free. The Turkish official estimates that around 1,400 Turkish nationals have joined IS, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra and other rebel groups in Syria since 2012.

    Many returnees will earn acquittal barring explicit evidence of violent acts committed in Syria, said Omer Behram Ozdemir, a researcher at Sakarya University who focuses on jihadist extremism in Turkey. “Unlike the Turkish jihadists who fought in the Bosnian, Afghan and Chechen conflicts, those who fight with [IS] see their conflict extending beyond the borders of Syria,” he warned.

    Near his new apartment on the streets of impoverished Haci Bayram, Murat says he is slowly reconnecting with his family and does not see Turkey as enemy territory. That conviction is tied to his belief that Turkey won’t decisively crack down on IS while the jihadists battle Kurdish militants in northern Syria.

    When asked about the recent arrests, his view of Turkey quickly soured. “We will regard any punishment in [Turkey] as a reward,” Murat declared. Emotionally volatile and wracked by post-traumatic stress disorder, Murat vacillates between disbelief at the violence of his actions in Syria and longing to return to combat. He expressed bewilderment at his commander’s order to carry out a grisly execution of a peshmerga captive in Iraq earlier in the year. “I couldn’t sleep for 10 days,” he said. Staring ahead blankly, Murat added unapologetically, “The laws are strict, but these are our commandments.”

    Ankara has admitted to the security risk the former jihadist fighters pose, but Turkish officials have declined to comment on how they plan to rehabilitate them. “So far, I haven’t heard of any plans for dealing with returnees from [IS],” said Ozdemir. Turkish Interior Minister Sebahattin Ozturk conceded July 7 that “negligence” had allowed Orhan Gonder, a 20-year-old returnee from IS, to elude Turkish intelligence and carry out twin bombings at a June 5 election rally in Diyarbakir. Four people were killed in the attack.

    If Turkey sustains its crackdown on native-born jihadists, it will find more of them within its borders than ever, Murat warned. Wary of a 10-year prison term if he skips trial, he has no plans to return to Syria. He also said IS recruits feel trapped in Turkey by the buildup of troops between the border towns of Kilis and Karkamis that has squeezed IS’ last smuggling route into Turkey after it lost the border city of Tell Abyad to Kurdish forces in June.

    “The war is also getting harder in Syria,” he said. Claiming to have been detained by fellow militants wary of escapees in Syria, he added, “More and more, fighters want to come home.”

    It remains to be seen how serious Ankara’s crackdown will be. The New York Times reported July 10 that some suspects had been freed just hours after their detention. Although the crackdown has included key names, including IS proponent Murat Gezenler, the jihadist web editor Abdulkadir Polat and pro-al Qaeda pundit Cumali Kurt, Ankara notoriously released the foremost pro-IS preacher, Abu Hanzala, during the height of the riots last October over Ankara’s response to the siege of Kobani.

    How Ankara deals with those it cannot hold in jail cells is a no less critical issue, said Ozdemir. “[IS] will publish its Turkish propaganda magazine’s new issue soon. We will see if it mentions Turkey’s policy on Turkish pro-IS supporters,” he said. “Regardless, returning [IS] fighters will pose a serious threat to the Turkish state.”

    Dogu Eroglu contributed to this article.