TURKISH "NATION STATE" PRECONDITIONS
Ruben Melkonyan

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04 December 2008

In the beginning of November of the current year the Turkish Defense
Minister Vecdi Gonul paid an official visit to Brussels to take part
in the meeting of the European Union Defense Ministers. The latter
one made a speech in the ceremony in commemoration of Ataturk held
on November 10 in the Turkish embassy in Brussels and expressed a
very noteworthy and, at the same time, scandalous idea connected with
Turkish "nation state."

According to him, for the homogeneous form of up-to-date Turkey they
are obliged to a number of circumstances – the exchange of population
between Turkey and Greece in 1923, according to which the Greeks
inhabited in Turkey were exiled to Greece, and the Muslim Turks in
there – to Turkey. During that exchange, according to different
sources, for about 1.5 – 2.5 million Greeks moved to Greece and
350-500 thousand Turks moved from Greece to Turkey. By the way,
the Turkish Defense Minister said, "Today if Greeks went on living
in the Aegean Sea basin and Armenians – in many places in Turkey,
would we be able to be the same nation state. I don’t know how to
explain how important the exchange of Greeks was."

In reality these words hide a whole ideology of the present day
Turkish state, the roots of which are long enough to reach the Ottoman
Empire. According to that ideology, Turks cannot peacefully coexist
with Armenians, Greeks or other non-Muslims in the same state and,
as they say, be a "nation state."

In perhaps inconsiderate words of the Defense Minister is also hidden
the traditional approach of the Turkish ruling elite, that’s to
say, Armenians, Greeks and other non-Muslims are to be annihilated,
assimilated or exiled from the country. At the same time this honest
confession about ethnic discriminations made us reconsider the issue
of peaceful coexistence with Turks, because, as a matter of fact,
the Turkish officials themselves directly or indirectly prove that
these propagandas are either false or have no value for them.

The Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul has also emphasized the importance of
the principles the Turkish Republic applied in its formation period
– "nation building" and economy: "I used to work in the Chamber of
Commerce in Izmir, and there wasn’t even one Muslim among the chamber
founders, they all were Europeans. Before the Republic was established
in Ankara there were four districts in Ankara, which belonged to
Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Muslims. The fertile lands of Aegean
Sea were in the hands of minority." Criticizing the "sad" past the
Turkish Defense Minister must be very happy with the present condition,
as the picture today is quite different from the past. The Minister
Gonul spoke positively about expulsion of non-Muslims from economy.

The ides of the Minister Gonul found a wide respond both in
Turkey and above its boarders. For example, a well-known Turkish
political scientist Professor Baskin Oran estimates the population
exchange of 1923 as ethnic and religious cleansing and considers
that this exchange and "1915 exile of Armenians destroyed Turkey’s
multiformity." According to the Professor, all these did a lot of harm
to Turkey, at that, in different spheres. Oran has also considered that
the expression of these ideas, especially in abroad, is wrong: "These
words have been told in abroad. I first think what the foreigners must
have said at this. It is right, the exchange of Greeks by the Turkish
Republic was not bloody, like in case of the Ottoman Empire, however,
how expedient it is to say it in the presence of foreigners. These
words are culturally, economically and politically wrong."

A number of Armenians from Constantinople wrote an open letter
concerning to the Minister’s words to the Turkish Prime-Minister
and were supported for about 20 intellectual-scientists. According to
them, the Minister was proud and was boasting of ethnic discriminations
practiced in their country, as a result of which millions of people had
been exiled from places they were inhabited for thousands of years. The
official Athens=2 0also responded to the Minister’s words: the Press
Speaker of Greece’s Foreign Ministry Yorgus Kumuchakos estimated it in
the following way. "One can notice dangerous and unacceptable logic in
the Minister’s announcement." In the Turkish "Zaman" newspaper Ihsan
Daghin asks a truthful question – Is the Minister Gonul the member of
the ruling Justice and Development Party or the Committee for Union
and Progress of Young Turks? And he thinks that the confession of
Enver Pasha’s our day successor may become an important trump card in
the issue of the "Armenian exile," certainly, not in favor of Turkey.

Many people blame the Minister that he had made a serious mistake to
say these words, which will be used by Turkey’s enemies, and first of
all by the Armenian Diaspora. The Turkish "Solidarity for Human Rights
and Persecutions" organization brought an action against the words
of the Minister, saying that there were clearly expressed elements
of ethnic discrimination in his words.

After the clamor resulted by the words of Gonul, the Defense Minister
made a few unsuccessful efforts to proofread his words, saying that
he didn’t mean our days, but the events which happened 80 years
ago. However, isn’t the picture today the depiction of what had
happened at the beginning of the century?

Just like it was fairly mentioned by the Turkish sci entist Cengiz
Aktar, "It was God who made Gonul speak" and these words have been
defined to be confession. And really, it may be considered to be
a confessing announcement about the state adopted policy, as, as a
result of the Armenian Genocide, massacres of Greeks and Assyrians,
the successor of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic, has
inherited incomparably less number of communities of national-religion
minorities, however, the state policy and attitude adopted to them has
remained the same – the minorities are dangerous, enemy and strange.

One can state as a fact that from the very first day the Turkish
republic was establish, national minorities has been subject to
different persecutions and pressures, although their rights were
theoretically protected by the Lausanne Treaty. A whole complex
of pressures was exerted in the Turkish Republic to non-Muslims –
exile, assimilation, religious, political, economic persecutions,
and all these directed to form a homogenous, "national" Turkey. A
number of components of the persecution policy adopted by Turkey,
such as tax of Property1, military draft of 20 classes2, the events3
of September 6-7, 1955, actions of "compatriot, speak Turkish4" etc.,
were serving this objective.

1In the beginning of WWII (1942) the Turkish government headed by
the Prime Minister Sukru Saracoglu submitted the so called law on
"Property tax" for=2 0approval of the Great National Assembly, which
was adopted on November 11, 1942 by unanimous voting of 350 deputies of
the Parliament session. Even with the naked eye it is obvious that the
law is directed against national-religious minorities. "Property tax"
divides tax-payers into 4 groups – according to religious belonging
a)Muslims, b)non-Muslims, c) apostates d) foreign subjects. As a matter
of fact, by this was violated the regulation of the Constitution
according to which all the citizens, including non-Muslims, were
enjoying equal rights in Turkey, and it was more reminding the period
of the Ottoman state, when non-Muslims paid taxes quite different
from the ones of Muslims. Not including the apostates into the group
of Muslims, the Turkish state once more demonstrated that it didn’t
trust that group and didn’t perceive it as "true Muslims." There are
also facts that some Armenian, Greeks and Jews who adopted Islam paid
taxes not like Muslims or apostates, but like non-Muslims.

In the law it was envisaged that Muslims and foreign subjects had to
pay taxes at the rate of 12.5%, non-Muslims- 50%, apostates (i.e. the
ones Islamized) – 25% of the whole property. As in Turkey of that
period the biggest non-Muslim communities were Armenian, Greek and
Jewish ones, it is quite natural, that the tax was mainly directed
against them.

To determine the rate of the tax and its collectio n, was established a
special commission. Special attention was devoted to all the commission
members to be pure-blooded Turks. It is not to be given secondary
importance to the issue that there were many former Ittihads. One of
the illegal clauses of the law was the fact that the commission itself
determined the extent of the tax, i.e. there were no clear criteria.

However, illegal clauses were not limited by this: the other norm
roughly violating human rights was that the tax-payer had no right
to bear a complain against the extent of the tax, i.e. the tax rate
willfully fixed by the commission was final. While determining the tax
rates the commission did not take into consideration real incomes and
means of a tax-prayer and he was taxed approximately, at will and mood.

In the process of collecting taxes there was another important
detail, to which we would like to attract attention. The Turkish
authorities also made a difference among non-Muslims and Armenians,
who, in comparison with other non-Muslims, were taxed at the highest
percents. So, for example, a Turkish tradesman was to pay 4.7%,
Greek-156%, Jew – 232% and Armenian – 232% of his annual income, and,
as a matter of fact, the Greek tradesman, in comparison with the Turk,
paid 31, the Jew – 36 and the Armenian 47 times more. 15 days-long
term was fixed for the tax to be paid, which was later on prolonged to
30 days. If, during this period the tax-payer could not pay the tax,
his movables and immovables was alienated and sold by auction at low
prices: but before that the tax-payers themselves tried to pay their
belongings at low prices. Let’s also mention that in case there were
short of money, the belongings of his relatives were also subject
to confiscation and selling. And, if this money was not enough too,
the taxpayers were condemned to penal servitude to work and pay their
"debt" to the state. The main place for servitude was Ashkale province
in Erzurum district famous for its cold climate, which was also called
"Turkish Siberia".

At the Turkish governmental session held on November 7, 1943 was
adopted a regulation of labor liability under19288 including the
following articles: according to I article, were classified tax-payers
condemned to forced labor. First of all labor camps were to be sent
those who hadn’t paid taxes at all, than the ones who paid partially
and so on. It was envisage to pay the convict certain number of money
making 250 kurushes a day, 60 kurushes of which were to be kept for
nourishment, dwelling and other expenses and the other part was to
be kept for paying debts for "Property Tax." According to the 15th
article, the tax-payer was to work till all his debts for "Property
Tax" were paid. However, this article made an absurd situation for
many tax payers, and perhaps meant life-long penal servitude. Thus,
for example, the tax-payers who had 400-500 liras and more debts had
to work 1600 years to pay their debts with their salaries. In 1869
the tax-payers sent to camps were from Istanbul, 889 – from Izmir, 100
-from Baku. According to the official data 1400 non-Muslim tax-payers
were sent only to Ashkale, 1229 of which were from Istanbul. 21 out
of them (according to another data) died in Ashkale.

It was also important the issue to whom the belongings taken from
nationalists and sold by auction passed on: as the facts have come
to prove all these belongings were at very low prices bought by
Turkish businessmen, organizations and banks. As a matter of fact,
"Property tax" carried out its mission – to hand all the economy of
the country over to Turks.

Only after material, moral, spiritual and physical devastation of
national minorities, the Turkish authorities, also yielding to foreign
pressure, canceled "property tax" as a manifestation of "good will."

2Among other persecutions registered in different periods of the
history of the Republic of Turkey little importance is devoted or is
completely ignored the so called conscription of 20 classes draft
in 1941 (according to some sources, from May 1-15) to non-Muslim
inhabitants by Turkish authorities. At the height of WWII Turkish
authorities hurriedly declared conscription : according to 20 classes
the adult men representatives of national minorities from 18-60,
Armenians, Greeks, Jews, were sent to "army."

Everybody was conscripted without any exceptions, even the ones
who had just returned from military service. The peculiarity of the
conscription was the fact that it was applied only to non-Muslims
citizens. Another important nuance was that the conscription was not
declared about beforehand: potential conscripts were gathered within
several hours, without prior notification.

Turkish sources accentuate that the decision about conscription was
thought over thoroughly: special efforts were made for no one to know
about this decision but corresponding authorities. This conscription
was notable as the male non-Muslims conscripts were not solders: they
did not get military education, they were not given arms and military
uniform. These unarmed "solders" did construction works. After the
conscription they did not obey the Ministry of Defense, but the
Ministry of Public Works in Turkey.

The non-Muslim conscripts were mainly inhabited in camps located in the
country’s eastern regions, where because of extremely bad conditions
were spread diseases becoming the reason of death and disablement
of many people. In spite of the fact that there aren’t nay official
figures left about the number of ones perished, according to eye
witnesses and many sources, there were many of them.

In one of=2 0the sources is mentioned an extremely important fact:
together with non-Muslims, Islamized Armenians were also taken to
"service." It has come to prove that the conscription of 20 classes had
a clearly defined ethnic shade, and even forcedly Islamized Armenians
were source of danger for Turkish authorities. This fact has also
came to prove that the state structures, from the very beginning of
Islamization, kept them under their rapt attention and controlled
everything happening in their surrounding.

After all there were not considered to be Muslims in reality.

While speaking about the reasons and aims of the conscription of 20
classes, it is to be mentioned that a little number of sources and the
stories of witnesses confirm that this, along with other derivative
goals, was directed at ethnic cleansing. An important reason of
conscription is considered that in those years, getting ready to
the possible war, the Turkish authorities in advance gathered and
neutralized national minorities called "The 5th Column." Different
sources mention that by this conscription the state also had an
objective of removing non-Muslims from the sphere of trade, where
they had serious positions.

3On September 6-7 of 1955 Greek and Armenian inhabitants of Istanbul
and Izmir became subject to hooligan assaults prepared on the state
level beforehand. The cause of it became news spread by the state
about firing the house of Ataturk who was in Salonika. After that
furious mobs assaulted Greek and Armenian blocks, robed and fired
houses, shops, and churches; tortured, raped and killed people. But to
this Turkish authorities reacted only a day later, when the work was
done. The facts unfolded later on in course of court investigation
proved that the assault was organized by the state, under direct
participation of high ranking state officials.

4In different periods of the history of the Turkish Republic (for
example ,in 1930, to 1960) were carried out so called actions
"Compatriot speak Turkish," the main targets of which were again
national minorities.

Groups of young people were mainly walking through blocks
mainly inhabited by national minorities and claiming them to
speak only Turkish: In case of disobedience the consequences
were unpredictable. In reality, it was the continuation of the
centuries-long policy of language assimilation.