CORRESPONDENCE 9

Letter 10

Dear Mehmet:

Sorry for being mute for some time. Work plus the holidays were an especially hectic time. Now it's a bit normal again.

Lots of things are happening or happened since you last emailed me. Anyway, the Ozur Diliyorum campaign on one side and the book about Talaat by Bardakci that I just got kept me busy. I have just started reading it and I haven't yet formulated any ideas about it. Perhaps I will in a couple of weeks.

So what are you up to? I am just starting to "market" our blog. Let's see what the reactions will be. Remember you told me in one email that the issue of Gul's mother being Armenian will explode one day? Well, it did happen as you said! What do you think about that?

Let's concentrate on the things that are happening nowadays in Turkey, Armenia and the Diaspora vis-à-vis the 1915-1923 period. I included the 1918-1923 period here, because there are lots of events that happened after the Mudros Armistice. Beside the war with Greece and the Izmir event, the test tube for Kemal in his struggle against the French and the establishment of the Turkish Republic stared in Marash in January of 1921. Marash is where my ancestors come from, you know? So 1921 has a special implication for me.

Do write to me about your ideas. I will start adding new correspondence to the blog as it goes.
Best Regards,
Garabet K Moumdjian

Answer to letter 10

Hello Dear Garo,

It is nice to hear from you. I heard about Bardakci's latest book, but I have not read it. Please let me know your ideas about his book and Talaat's black paper after formulating your opinions.

Regarding President Gul, it is really a shame for this political party (CHP) who defines itself as "social democrat" to blame a man as being Armenian. I really can not understand this party. My Armenian Muslim colleague told me that Gul can be an Armenian. He also told me (it is really a surprise) that Alparslan Turkeş, founder of MHP (Nationalist Action Party) and the most prominent Turkish nationalist and ex military who was active in the coup d'état of 1960, is an Armenian from Kayseri, Talas. I had heard several rumors about his ethnic origin but I had not believed it, since the origin of the rumors were his opponents. We have many Armenians in Turkey. As I said earlier all Turks (true ethnic Turks) should have some Armenian and Greek (indeed Rum, the mixture of ancient Anatolian peoples, Romans and Greeks), Slavic and Mediterranean blood to some extent. Of course we have still people having physical features of a real Turk (Oghuz tribe) with slanting eyes, elliptical or global faces, few hair on their bodies and faces (no beard on their cheeks) etc. In general they come from remote parts of Anatolia and small villages that did not have access to other cities and thus the opportunity to partake in the slave business of antiquity.

Regarding the Alevi population of Anatolia, we have several different types of Alevi beliefs. One of them, which is really close to Christianity in some aspects, has several similarities with Christianity: The Trinity of Ali, Muhammed and Allah, use of vine and bread in rituals, excommunication...I have a theory about these similarities: These Alevis have some kind of interaction with Armenians. In general these kind of similarities have two reasons:

1. Conversion by force: People who were converted by force continue to live their old religion within the codes and meanings of the new religion.

2. Dervishes (especially heterodox ones) who tried to convert local Christians voluntarily used some symbols and rituals of Christianity in order to attract Christians to a new religion. This occurred during the Christianization of Western and Northern Europe. The similarity between St. Nicolas with one of the gods of the Germans; adoption of some pagan feasts and filling them with Christian meanings.

So this type of Alevis may be Armenians converted in different ways and in different periods. Some of them must have been converted by Iranian Turkic states like the Akkoyunlu, the Karakoyunlu, the Safevids etc. Because there is a deep effect of Shii belief mixed with Christian...

Furthermore, it seems that besides our president, our prime minister, Receb Tayyip Erdogan, descends from a Greek Muslim family from Potamia [Potamianos], called Rize today. He is a mixture of Georgian and Greek. There are rumors also about Turkey’s head of General Staff's, Sabetaist origin. As you see, we do not have Turk in the most critical points…

Nowadays, I am doing some research about "Turkish identity in medieval era". I am reading old Ottoman and Seljuk historians. It is really interesting to see how they define a Turk. In fact they do not define him and the term used is really vague. Neither Seljuk nor Ottomans (or other Beyliks) define themselves as Turk. Turk sometimes has a pejorative meaning. For example, in Fatih laws (Mehmet II, the conqueror) it is written: "Every man, Turk or urban (şehirli) who drinks alcohol should be beaten by a stick." In this provision Turk should mean villager and/or nomad. In another provisions of the same law, there is an account: While wondering in his palace, Fatih came across some janissaries and he saluted them. The janissaries replied to him by "Aleykumselam Muhammed Beşe (distorted version of Pasha)." Hearing this, the sultan was angry (because he is the sultan not a pasha) and he goes to his Sadrazam Mahmut Pasha and says to him: "These janissaries can not speak Turkish; they should learn Turkish and therefore we shall give them to Turks, so that they learn Turkish". In this account of the same law the meaning of Turk is Turkish speaking people. It has some ethnic implications.

I read some historians and an autobiography of Ottomans from 16th-17th centuries. All of them contain the term Turk. But all of them were the dialogues of Europeans or North Africans among themselves...Westerners call Ottomans Turks. But none of these Ottoman writers define Ottomans directly as Turks. They prefer Ottoman, Musulman or even Rum (Rumi, meaning Roman)

I am now reading an old history book titled "History of Seljuk States" written by a Seljuk administrator who lived in the first half of 14th century. He used the term Turk for riots from Karaman and Karamanoglu Beylik. He says Muslim army (Seljuk army) beat "rebel and ferocious Turks"...

More research and reading should be done, but I have the impression that "Turk" is a term used by others to define "Turk"...and Ottomans were aware of this since they use this term just in the fictive dialogues of Christians or Arabs...

In Adana, Marash, Antep and Urfa during 1919 - 1921 there were atrocities among Armenians and Turk/Kurdish population of these cities. I really wonder exact numbers/figures about civilian loss of both parties in this period. Have you ever seen Marash?

I hope the marketing of our blog will be successful, because Turks and Armenians really need these kind of platforms.

My best regards
Mehmet