Turkish Forum

Tag: History

  • Turkey’s first lady cooks special meals for Armenian President

    Turkey’s first lady cooks special meals for Armenian President

    ARMENIA

    Thu 15 October 2009 | 07:41 GMT

    Hayrunisa and Abdullah Gul
    Serzh Sarkisian and Abdullah Gul The first lady of Turkey cooked special meals for Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Novosti-Armenia’s correspodent reported from Turkey.

    Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian told Armenian journalists following the Armenia-Turkey football match that Gul arranged dinner in honor of the Armenian President.

    “Special meals cooked by Turkish President’s wife were brought from Ankara in this regard. By doing this, Gul strived to make a reception in honor of the Armenian President more cordial”, said Nalbandian.

    Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has visited Turkey to watch the Armenia-Turkey football match in frames of the 2010 World Cup qualification.

    Armenian and Turkish FMs Edward Nalbandian and Ahmed Davutoghlu signed a Protocol on Establishment of Diplomatic Relations and a Protocol on Development of Bilateral Relations in Zurich on October 10. The documents are to be approved by the parliaments of both countries after signing.

    /Novosti-Armenia/

  • HISTORY: Musa Dagh and Armenians

    HISTORY: Musa Dagh and Armenians

    Sevgi Zübeyde GÜRBÜZ

    musamap

    For many Armenians, “Musa Dagh” is a symbol of resistance against extermination by the Turks. Popularized by Franz Werfel’s 1933 book entitled “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” the battle is portrayed as the flight and struggle of the Armenian population of six villages, allegedly poorly armed and with few provisions,

    Map of Musa Dagh

    against the onslaught of the Ottoman army, trying to implement the relocation orders that so many Armenians equate to genocide. After holding out for 53 days, roughly 4,000 Armenians were transported by five Allied warships to Egypt, where they stayed in refugee camps until the end of World War I, before finally returning to their homes in Hatay.
    When the French relinquished control of Hatay to Turkey in 1939, many of these Armenians, by their own free will, chose to immigrate to other countries. According to the residents of the last of the Armenian villages near Musa Dagh, the village of Vakifli [1], those who chose to migrate were primarily “right-wing”, while those who stayed were “left-wing” and trusted Turkey’s new leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk [2].
    As might be expected, Turkish accounts of the Battle of Musa Dagh are quite different. According to the Turkish Governor of Halep at the time, General Fahrettin Turkkan, the Armenians living around Musa Dagh had reports that the Allies intended to land forces in the region of Iskenderun, and thus decided to stop paying the taxes they owed the Ottoman government, ascending to the top of Musa Dagh in rebellion. Officials from the government were sent to warn and advise these Armenians to pay their taxes, but instead they were welcomed with gunfire. Left without any other choice but to confront these rebels, the local Jandarma commander, Colonel Galip, climbed with his forces to the top of Musa Dag, but was surprised to find that the Armenians had evacuated the region. Upon examination, it was found that the Armenians had gone towards the Mediterranean, boarding a French warship. There were no bodies, no wounded, no sick people found at all. Just 20-30 slaughtered animals. [3]Map of the Historical defence at Musa Dagh, 1915

    Another perspective on the Battle of Musa Dagh is given by Albert Amateau, a Sephardic Jew born and raised in Milas, Turkey, who in a signed, notarized deposition dating October 11, 1989, offered the following account:
    “Fifty thousand Armenians, all armed, ascended the summit of that mountain after provisioning it to stand siege. Daily sallies from that summit of armed bands attacked the rear of the Ottoman armies, and disappeared into the mountain. When the Ottomans finally discovered the fortification the Armenians had prepared, they could not assault and invade it. It stood siege for 40 days, which is a good indication of the preparations the Armenians had made surreptitiously under the very nose of the Ottoman Government. Nor was it ever explained that the rebellion of the Armenians had been fostered, organized, financed, and supplied with arms and munitions by the Russians.”
    This description is supported by Edward J. Erickson, who in his book “Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War”, wrote that there was strong fighting for forty days in Musa Dagh. All this raises several important questions about the Armenian version of events. For example, if the Armenians were truly poorly armed, and fled the mountain without much planning to avoid relocation, then how did they hold out so long? Furthermore, Musa Dagh is just one speck on Turkey’s very long Mediterranean coastline. Isn’t it just a bit too coincidental that a French warship just “happened” to be passing by at the right time to miraculously discover the Armenians on Musa Dagh and rescue them?
    Regardless of whether the Armenians of Musa Dagh were in cahoots with the French or not, which ever way you look at it, the fact remains that the Armenians of Musa Dagh chose to rebel, they chose to fight the Ottoman army, they chose to resist the eviction order. Relocation is NOT tantamount to genocide, although clearly something undesirable from an Armenian perspective. I can understand why they’d want to resist leaving their homes. However, any losses incurred during the fighting cannot even be termed even a massacre because the Armenians were armed and willingly engaged the Ottoman army.
    Furthermore, even if you accept the Armenian explanation that at they ascended Musa Dagh to flee relocation, that the revolt was provoked by the Ottomans, this can hardly be viewed as characteristic of Armenian revolts during that time. It is well documented that Armenian rebellions began in 1914, the year prior to the May 1915 relocation decree. In fact, dispatches even detail the names of Turks who were attacked, murdered or raped by Armenian militias [4]. A detailed analysis of the rebellion in Van, which triggered the relocation decision, is given by Justin McCarthy in his recent book entitled “The Armenian Rebellion at Van.”
    Which brings me to my first question: why is Werfel’s book so precious to Armenians? Why would a film based on the battle be so detrimental to the image of Turks, and so useful in advancing Armenian allegations of genocide?
    Unfortunately, Werfel’s book did not just dramatize the Battle of Musa Dagh, but interjected accusations and dialogue directly accusing the Ottoman regime of planning to systematically exterminate the entire Armenian population. In Werfel’s fiction, the deportation order was merely a cover for genocidal intentions.
    For example, in his book, Werfel writes: “The same forthright and stumpy fingers (of Talaat Pasha) had composed that order sent out to the walis and mutessarifs: The goal of these deportations is annihilation.” Here, Werfel is clearly referring to the Andonian Documents which allegedly contain telegrams sent by Talat Pasha that openly state his alleged intention to kill Armenians. In Document #1 of the Andonian papers, Talat Pasha allegedly wrote: “Of course the Government will give the necessary instructions about the necessary massacres to the Governors.” And in the next document states that by November 18, 1915, “It is the duty of all to effect on the broadest lines, the realization of the noble project of wiping out of the existence the Armenians…”
    The problem with the Talat Pasha telegrams, however, is that these have been shown by Professors Sinasi Orel and Surreya Yuca to be forgeries! [5] In fact, Armenians have no proof that the Ottomans ever planned massacres. To the contrary, archives show that Ottoman soldiers were ordered to protect migrating Armenians, a fact corroborated by the statement of 105 year-old Armenian Yeghisapet Kesabyan of Lebanon: “We walked for days. Ottoman soldiers were always by our side to protect us so that no one would attack us.” [6]
    Both Armenians and Turks were victims of inter-communal violence, hunger, starvation and disease during that time. The Ottoman archives document that over 500,000 Muslims perished at Armenian hands. All in all, an estimated 2.5 million Muslims were slaughtered during World War I. The British are on record for having told Armenian leaders, “You kill the Muslisms, and we will supply you with the arms and ammunition.” [7] For some reason, Europe chooses to ignore Turkish victims, and selectively mourn Armenians.
    The next important question then, is on what sources did Werfel base his book?
    Albert Amateau offers the following information about Franz Werfel, a fellow Jew who he knew personally:
    “My friend, Franz Werfel, of Vienna, a writer, wrote a book entitled THE 40 DAYS AT MUSA DAGH, a history of the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. The story was told to him by his friend, the Armenian Bishop of Vienna and Werfel never doubted the Bishop’s account. He did not investigate what he wrote. Years later, when the true facts about Musa Dagh were established by the research of neutral investigators – which was never denied by the Armenians – Werfel discovered that he had been duped by his friend, the Bishop, with a concocted story. Werfel confessed to me his shame and remorse for having written that story, in which he had blamed the Ottomans as the aggressors and terrorists.”
    In his book, Werfel writes of how he got interested in the Armenian case: “This book was conceived in March of 1929, in the course of a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of some maimed and famished-looking refugee children, working in a carpet factory gave me the final impulse to snatch from the Hades of all that was this incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian nation.”
    Werfel goes on to state that he also used “historic records of a conversation between Enver Pasha and Pastor Johannes Lepsius” in reference to Lepsius’s book “Deutschland und Armenien.” From the sound of that statement, you might think that Lepsius was simply relaying information from Enver Pasha himself, but in fact much of what he wrote was based upon information provided by Armenian informants residing in Istanbul, and American Ambassador Morgenthaus (a man infamous for his racist anti-Turkish statements, who himself was primarily informed by Armenians). Lepsius himself never traveled into Anatolia, and obtained no first-hand information. [8]
    Thus, the basic fact remains that Werfel had no direct knowledge of the Battle of Musa Dagh, never went to Turkey to investigate, or contact Turkish authorities to cross-check Armenian accounts, but merely regurgitated what he heard either directly or indirectly from Armenian sources.
    Further complicating the reliability of “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh” as a source is that blatant historical mistakes were made, such as timing the Armenian revolt in Van as having taken place after the relocation orders, when in fact the rebellion began two months earlier in February 1915; and that in its translation from German into English, passages that could have been interpreted as favoring Turks were dropped. In his book, “The Myth of Terror”, Erich Feigl writes [9]:
    “The Armenian circles that shorten and mutilate Werfel’s novel in the English edition know exactly why they must take these passages – in this particular case a whole page -~ out of the book. (There is, by the way, not one word to indicate that the novel has been altered in this fashion.) Today, there are a few scattered historical works in which anyone who is interested can find out about the true events and the sequence in which they occurred. In some libraries, one can even still find publications in which the Armenians boast of their war with the Ottomans, although these publications have now disappeared from nearly all libraries, and it has become truly difficult to find a magazine like Der Orient, put out by Johannes Lepsius.”
    Why are Armenian accounts accepted by Europeans at face value?
    Oral histories are never reliable sources because they are subject to human tampering. Stories can be exaggerated, one-sided, or even purposefully manipulated to demonize “the enemy.” As accounts are passed on from one person to the next, they also tend to be altered. I remember an exercise my middle school history teacher had us perform, in which she selected 10 students, telling one student a single sentence and asking him to pass it on to one of the other 10 students. Each time the sentence was passed on, the message bearer told it to the class, and we got to see first hand how even simple memory lapse could completely corrupt the message. Much of the hatred towards Turks has been instigated by horrific accounts by Armenian “survivors” – but how much is fact and how much is fiction, embellished for political purposes, is clearly up for debate.
    Furthermore, doesn’t the fact that over the past 90 years Armenians have resorted to forgery, thievery, and terrorism to manipulate history and silence both the Turkish community and historians raise any alarm bells?
    Sylvester Stallone has accused Turks of “killing” the “subject for 85 years.” Sly, we haven’t been “killing” anyone or anything. We’ve merely been pointing out the inconsistencies and inaccuracies with Armenian storytelling. Even in a court of law defendants are innocent until proven guilty. Surely the Turkish people deserve the chance to defend themselves, and not be hanged by 90 years of bad-press and contrary popular opinion.
    Rather than criticizing Turks for defending themselves, both in World War I against European colonization and ethnic cleansing [10] and today, against false genocide accusations, perhaps you should think about the responsibilities actors have in remaining loyal to the truth.
    If you are so concerning with Armenian history, perhaps you should try to become part of the solution, and act in support of proposals that could reconcile the Armenian and Turkish communities, such as Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s proposal for a joint historical research committee, or Ambassador Gunduz Aktan’s proposal for an open trial, in which the history could be debated and a final outcome reached.
    The true epic tale here is not Musa Dagh, but the story of the Turkish Independence War, and how Turks overcame the armies of the British, French, Russians, Greeks and Armenians to establish the first modern, democratic republic in the Middle East.
    Sevgi Zubeyde Gurbuz
    [1] Adem Yavuz Arslan. “Son Ermeni Koyu: Vakifli” (The Last Armenian Village: Vakifli) Aksiyon Magazine, No. 555, July 25, 2005.

    [2] Celal Baslangic, “Musa’dan Notlar” (Notes from Musa) Radikal Newspaper, July 29, 2002.
    [3] Sakarya, Em.Tümg. İhsan-Belgelerle Ermeni Sorunu, Gnkur.Basımevi, Ankara 1984, s. 245-246, http://www.ermenisorunu.gen.tr/turkce/sorun/isyan13.html
    [4] “Documents I,” Prime Ministry Directorate General of Press and Information.
    [5] Turkkaya Ataov, “The Andonian ‘Documents’ Attributed to Talat Pasha are Forgeries”
    An article summarizing the research in the book by Sinasi Orel and Surreya Yuca, “The Talat Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction?” London, 1986.
    [6] Hasim Soylemez, “During Expulsion the Turkish Troops Protected Us From Attacks,” Zaman Newspaper, May 5, 2005.
    [7] Mim Kemal Oke, “The Armenian Question”, pp. 180.
    [8] Frank G. Weber cited in “The Armenian File” by Kamuran Gurun, pp. 221.
    [9] Excerpt from the book “A Myth of Terror” by Erich Feigl.
    [10] Stanford Shaw, “The Turkish War of National Liberation”, Turkish Historical Society, Ankara, 2000; and Justin McCarthy, “Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims,” Darwin Press, March 1996.
    TURKISH JOURNAL

  • Armenian DIASPORA horrified by treaty with Turkey

    Armenian DIASPORA horrified by treaty with Turkey

    Robert Fisk: Genocide forgotten: Armenians horrified by treaty with Turkey
    A new trade deal is set to gloss over the murder of 1.5 million people
    In the autumn of 1915, an Austrian engineer called Litzmayer, who was helping build the Constantinople-Baghdad railway, saw what he thought was a large Turkish army heading for Mesopotamia. But as the crowd came closer, he realised it was a huge caravan of women, moving forward under the supervision of soldiers.
    The 40,000 or so women were all Armenians, separated from their men – most of whom had already had their throats cut by Turkish gendarmerie – and deported on a genocidal death march during which up to 1.5 million Armenians died.
    Subjected to constant rape and beatings, some had already swallowed poison on their way from their homes in Erzerum, Serena, Sivas, Bitlis and other cities in Turkish western Armenia. “Some of them,” Bishop Grigoris Balakian, one of Litzmayer’s contemporaries, recorded, “had been driven to such a state that they were mere skeletons enveloped in rags, with skin that had turned leathery, burned from the sun, cold, and wind. Many pregnant women, having become numb, had left their newborns on the side of the road as a protest against mankind and God.” Every year, new evidence emerges about this mass ethnic cleansing, the first holocaust of the last century; and every year, Turkey denies that it ever committed genocide. Yet on Saturday – to the horror of millions of descendants of Armenian survivors – the President of Armenia, Serg Sarkissian, plans to agree to a protocol with Turkey to re-open diplomatic relations, which should allow for new trade concessions and oil interests. And he proposes to do this without honouring his most important promise to Armenians abroad – to demand that Turkey admit it carried out the Armenian genocide in 1915.
    In Beirut yesterday, outside Mr Sarkissian’s hotel, thousands of Armenians protested against this trade-for-denial treaty. “We will not forget,” their banners read. “Armenian history is not for sale.” They called the President a traitor. “Why should our million and a half martyrs be put up for sale?” one of them asked. “And what about our Armenian lands in Turkey, the homes our grandparents left behind? Sarkissian is selling them too.”
    The sad truth is that the 5.7 million Armenian diaspora, scattered across Russia, the US, France, Lebanon and many other countries, are the descendants of the western Armenians who bore the brunt of Turkish Ottoman brutality in 1915.
    Tiny, landlocked, modern-day Armenia – its population a mere 3.2 million, living in what was once called eastern Armenia – is poor, flaunts a dubious version of democracy and is deeply corrupt. It relies on remittances from its wealthier cousins overseas; hence Mr Sarkissian’s hopeless mission to New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Beirut and Rostov-on-Don to persuade them to support the treaty, to be signed by the Armenian and Turkish Foreign Ministers in Switzerland.
    The Turks have also been trumpeting a possible settlement to the territory of Nagorno-Karabagh, part of historic Armenia seized from Azerbaijan by Armenian militias almost two decades ago – not without a little ethnic cleansing by Armenians, it should be added. But it is the refusal of the Yerevan government to make Turkey’s acknowledgement of the genocide a condition of talks that has infuriated the diaspora.
    “The Armenian government is trying to sweeten the taste for us by suggesting that Turkish and Armenian historians sit down to decide what happened in 1915,” one of the Armenians protesting in Beirut said.
    “But would the Israelis maintain diplomatic relations if the German government suddenly called the Jewish Holocaust into question and suggested it all be mulled over by historians?”
    Betrayal has always been in the air. Barack Obama was the third successive US President to promise Armenian electors that he would acknowledge the genocide if he won office – and then to betray them, once elected, by refusing even to use the word. Despite thunderous denunciations in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide by Lloyd George and Churchill – the first British politician to call it a holocaust – the Foreign Office also now meekly claims that the “details” of the 1915 massacres are still in question. Yet still the evidence comes in, even from this newspaper’s readers. In a letter to me, an Australian, Robert Davidson, said his grandfather, John “Jock” Davidson, a First World War veteran of the Australian Light Horse, had witnessed the Armenian genocide: “He wrote of the hundreds of Armenian carcasses outside the walls of Homs. They were men, women and children and were all naked and had been left to rot or be devoured by dogs.
    “The Australian Light Horsemen were appalled at the brutality done to these people. In another instance his company came upon an Armenian woman and two children in skeletal condition. She signed to them that the Turks had cut the throats of her husband and two elder children.”
    In his new book on Bishop Balakian, Armenian Golgotha, the historian Peter Balakian (the bishop’s great-nephew) records how British soldiers who had surrendered to the Turks at Kut al-Amara in present-day Iraq and were sent on their own death march north – of 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, only 1,600 would survive – had spoken of frightful scenes of Armenian carnage near Deir ez-Zour, not far from Homs in Syria. “In those vast deserts,” the Bishop said, “they had come upon piles of human bones, crushed skulls, and skeletons stretched out everywhere, and heaps of skeletons of murdered children.”
    When the foreign ministers sit down to sign their protocol in Switzerland on Saturday, they must hope that blood does not run out of their pens.
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-genocide-forgotten-armenians-horrified-by-treaty-with-turkey-1799302.html

    __._,_.___

  • General Eisenhower Warned Us

    General Eisenhower Warned Us


    German Holocaust German Holocaust

    It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

    He did this because he said in words to this effect:

    “Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

    This week, the UK removed the record of the Holocaust from its school curriculum because it “offended” the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. How easily each country gives into this idea is a frightening reality.

    It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were ‘murdered, raped, burned, starved, beat, experimented on and humiliated’ while the German people looked the other way!

    German Holocaust German Holocaust

    Now, more than ever, with countries and governments like Iran, claiming the Holocaust to be nothing more than a “myth”, it is imperative for every civilized human being to make sure the world never forgets the truth.

    Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world. E-mail everyone you know.

    How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center

    “NEVER HAPPENED!!!”

    World Trade Center on 9/11 World Trade Center on 9/11 World Trade Center on 9/11

    When will this re-writing of history happen because it offends the conscience and sensitive nature of Muslims in the United States?

    If you think it cannot happen, think again. No one ever thought the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the Nazis could be doubted or forgotten.

    Contributed by:

    http://www.targetofopportunity.com/eisenhower.htm


  • Contemporary Necessary : Frankfurt School

    Contemporary Necessary : Frankfurt School

    Frankfurt school had been established to create a new resist about old traditional sociological theories and its main minds base on Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas. We define foundation of Frankfurt school in near historical perspective. At this time European destruction on I.World War, different dimensions of Russian revaluation, fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini in socialist regions of Europea influenced ideas of this school. frankfurt

    Frankfurt school had been established to create a new resist about old traditional sociological theories and its main minds base on Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas. We define foundation of Frankfurt school in near historical perspective. At this time European destruction on I.

    World War, different dimensions of Russian revaluation, fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini in socialist regions of Europea influenced ideas of this school. In general founders had been affected by ideas of Marx. So we say that this school created a general table as Marxist methods to criticism. The project of the Frankfurt School was to develop a critical theory of contemporary society that would combine philosophy, social theory, economics and cultural criticism in a new type of interdisciplinary theory. Also there is a variety between main ideas and methods of Marx[1]. Frankfurt school adopted contributions of Marx to economical developments and his research and critique methods. So there is a new Critique Method of school.

     

    Frankfurt school believed that old principles should be transformed into new tools. On this way self image is important than common criticism. All theoretical points can be improve by firstly auto-criticism, hereby thinkers refused social and economical determinism which are existed on old Marxist theories, also disclaimed comdemnation individuals on common social body in Marx and Engel’s idea. Society needs to secret potentials of individuals according to school.

     

    Criticism will destroy all oppressive systems and people will be conscious against to ideologies. Capitalism is progressing quickly, so we don’t need old methods to understand contemporary circumstances. Modern capitalism is controlling people who are working in heavy conditions and it manipulating information and populer cultur to prevent disobediences. Frankfurt school is defining this as culture industry. Its first duty is to adapt people to capitalism. Culture industry creates some small daily relaxation materials in heavy working life. Industry abuses mass media organs to create artificial system and people know them as relaxation mechanisms. Theodor Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. School refuses its functions because these mechanisms are working to create again people’s work desires to capitalist system. Thus capitalism need to establish secret masks to legitimate its artificial system, contemporary sociologies are these masks. Theories of sociology and functionalism transformed to serve this idea.[2] Common target should be defined by thinkers as to create new solutions, share paradoxes in society and how they are produced by dominant system. Works of Adorno and Horkheimer heavily influenced intellectual discourse on populer culture.

     

    It is possible to create rational society with using Hegel’s ideas. Hegel says that reality is rational and humanity has an intelligence potential. So school is criticising modern society which is controlled by the cruel world system. Rational society is a common body which we are joining this with transforming environmental conditions. It gives standart opportunities to criticise available societies but Habermas creates a different model about it. He refuses rationality, humanity uses a concrete way. His utopic idea is that everybody should join to public discussions. Ideas of Habermas don’t base on rational society term, it is an ideal society which shares potential abilities of people.

    He determined three common points of human in Knowledge and Human Interests[3];

     

    – The technical human interest, which entails empirical and analytical ways of knowing and represents the world in terms of objects, processes and laws which describe the transformation of objects and processes

     

    – The practical human interest, which entails historical and hermeneutic ways of knowing that represent the physical, social, and cultural worlds as “texts” which have to be interpreted in order for meaning to emerge

     

    – The emancipatory human interest, which entails a critical way of knowing where critical theorems are gleaned through collective reflection on social and cultural practices and then used to restructure future actions.

     

    Thinkers of Frankfurt school focused on cultural and modernism problems. Related to this, they resisted to concrete rationalities of capitalist society. On this way they defenced importancy of cultural reality as against to economical functions. First resist to positivism had been created by Horkheimer. He aimed at dialectic positivists because of they shared a seperatist movement between phenomenons and values.[4] According to Horkheimer, positivism is a poor philosophical branch because it can not modernize itself and as epistemologically it can not understand real results. Horkheimer criticised positivism systematically in his articles and created common outlook to positivism of school.

     

    Criticism of Horkheimer improved by Habermas. In his “Knowledge and Human Interests” he define positivism as a monopolistic system which keeps information. If positivism recognises its target, it can be itself an information. It is possible to create this with using cathegories and notions which are refused by itself. Positivism had been established to give directions to people, it worked and today it has no important function. Also thinkers followed a way to criticise positivist approach of Marx. It shares a criticism to Soviets. Decisions can not depend on worker class, it should be established by theorists. So today’s authoritarianism of Soviet Marxism is a result of positivism, not Marxism.[5]

    Frankfurt school is a revisionist movement because criticism action of classic Marxist ideas and economical determinism.

    [1] Marxist Internet Archive, The Franktfurt School, www.marxist.org

    [2] Rudolf J. Siebert. “The Critical Theory of Religion: The Frankfurt School

    [3] Knowledge, Jurgen Habermas : http://www.psychiatriapsychoterapia.pl

    [4] Jeremy J. Shapiro. “The Critical Theory of Frankfurt “, in: Times Literary Supplement

    [5] Necati Bozkurt, 20. yy Düşünce Akımları , Sarmal Yayınları

     

    Mehmet Fatih ÖZTARSU

    Caspian Weekly

  • Remembering The Turkish Brigade

    Remembering The Turkish Brigade

    in The Korean War


    By Mark Meirowitz

    It is Memorial Day 2009 in the United States, and I believe it is very fitting to remember with respect and thanks the contribution and heroism of the Turkish Brigade in the Korean War. These Turkish soldiers fought with bravery and heroism side by side with American soldiers.

    In June, 1950, following the invasion by North Korea of South Korea, Turkey responded by sending a brigade of  5,000 troops to the conflict. “Turkey is ready to meet her responsibilities” was Turkey’s response to the need for action to combat the North Korean aggressor.

    The Turkish Brigade, under the command of Brigadier General Tahsin Yazici, fought with courage in a number of battles, including those at Kunuri, Kumyangjang-ni, Taegyewonni and Wegas. It is estimated that Turkey lost over 700 men killed in action, with about 2,000 wounded and 400 missing in action.  Over the entire campaign period, about 14,000 Turkish troops served in Korea. The Turkish Brigade received the Distinguished Unit Citation from US President Harry S. Truman and the Presidential Unit Citation from the President of Korea.One commentator said as follows: “The Turks acquitted themselves in a brave and noble fashion in some of the worst conditions experienced in the Korean War. Very little else could have been required or expected of them. Their heavy casualties speak of their honor and commitment. Their bravery requires no embellishment. It stands on its own.”

    There is an expression, “the more things change, the more they remain the same”. The news this Memorial Day is of North Korea’s underground nuclear test. This is a stark reminder of America’s need for friends in this complex world. Turkey is, and has been, one of America’s most stalwart friends. It is a committed member of NATO, and, as we have seen, during the Korean War, when North Korea launched an attack on South Korea, Turkey stepped up and showed its friendship by committing its troops to the conflict.

    Americans need to know this story, and learn about the many other ways that Turkey has been a solid ally of the United States, even in the most adverse circumstances.

    The story of the Turkish Brigade in the Korean War resonates brilliantly and inspires us even until today.

    To the veterans of the Turkish Brigade, we give our heartfelt thanks, and to the memories of those brave Turkish soldiers of the Turkish Brigade, who fell, along with American soldiers, in the Korean War, we say: Thank you from our hearts for your sacrifice, for which we will be eternally grateful.

    ————————————–

    Mark Meirowitz is a business lawyer in Manhattan. He also holds a doctorate in Politics and teaches undergraduate courses in Politics, History and Law at various colleges in the NYC metropolitan area. He is studying Turkish and belongs to a number of Turkish-American organizations.